Hezbollah US Envoy Attempts To Avert Escalation Between Israel And Lebanese Militants

A senior envoy from the Biden administration has met Benjamin Netanyahu for talks aimed at averting a deepening conflict between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, after Israel warned over the weekend that it was on the brink of a "wider escalation".

- Peter Beaumont

Amos Hochstein has spent months in largely behind-the-scenes diplomacy in an attempt to quieten tensions between Israel and Hezbollah. Since the war in Gaza began in October, there have been worsening daily exchanges of fire, and tens of thousands of civilians have been displaced on both sides of the "Blue Line" between Israel and Lebanon.

Over the weekend, the UN special coordinator for Lebanon, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, and the head of the UN peacekeeping forces in Lebanon, Aroldo Lázaro, said in a joint statement that they were "deeply concerned" about the escalation along Lebanon's border, describing the "very real" risk that a miscalculation along the southern border could trigger a wider war.

That warning was underlined yesterday when Israel assassinated a Hezbollah commander in his car near the southern Lebanese city of Tyre.

Hochstein met Netanyahu and the Israeli defence minister, Yoav Gallant, yesterday before flying to Lebanon where he will meet Nabih Berri, the speaker of the Lebanese parliament and leader of the Amal movement, who has represented Hezbollah's views to western interlocutors.

There is growing anxiety in Washington and elsewhere over the risk of a serious escalation between the two sides, not least after Israel's killing last week of Taleb Abdallah, the most senior Hezbollah commander to be targeted so far.