An Israeli airstrike that targeted the village of Khiam in southern Lebanon on Monday.
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U.S. Tries to End War in Lebanon That Biden Envoy Calls ‘Out of Control’

Israel and Hezbollah say they will keep up attacks in an escalating conflict that has devastated Gaza, is causing misery in Lebanon and could draw Iran deeper into the fighting.

by · NY Times

As Israel vowed to continue its attacks against the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, a White House emissary visiting Lebanon on Monday said the conflict had “escalated out of control” and called for the enforcement of a United Nations resolution that ended the previous major war between them, in 2006.

The U.S. official, Amos Hochstein, a special adviser to President Biden on the Israel-Hezbollah conflict, spoke in Beirut, his first visit to the Lebanese capital since the Israeli military launched a ground offensive and intensified its aerial attacks against Hezbollah last month.

Israel’s military campaign against the Iranian-backed armed group, prompted by months of cross-border rocket fire, has set off a humanitarian crisis in Lebanon, displacing around a fifth of the population. The conflict has killed more than 2,400 Lebanese over the past year, according to the country’s health ministry.

After weeks of bombarding Hezbollah’s military and its leaders, the Israeli military shifted targets, saying it had conducted strikes overnight on “dozens of facilities and sites” used by Hezbollah to finance its attacks against Israel. The military said it had targeted Al-Qard al-Hasan, which U.S., Israeli and other officials have accused of operating as Hezbollah’s banking arm. The extent of any casualties was unclear.

In Lebanon, where Hezbollah is also a powerful political organization, Al-Qard al-Hasan is a registered charity and is at the heart of the group’s social services network.

“Hezbollah has paid and will continue to pay a heavy price for its attacks on northern Israel and its rocket fire,” Israel’s foreign minister, Israel Katz, said on social media. “We will keep striking the Iranian proxy until it collapses.”

Hezbollah has said its rocket and drone attacks on Israel are in solidarity with its ally Hamas, another Iran-backed group, which led the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, prompting a devastating Israeli retaliatory campaign in the Gaza Strip.

Last week, the Biden administration expressed hope that the killing of Hamas’s leader, Yahya Sinwar, could create new opportunities for diplomacy. U.S. officials have hoped for months that a cease-fire in Gaza could calm tensions on the Israel-Lebanon border and across the region.

But Israeli bombings in Gaza and Lebanon have continued. And even as Mr. Hochstein spoke to reporters in Lebanon, Hezbollah continued to fire rockets toward northern Israel, following its pledges to intensify attacks against Israel in the wake of Mr. Sinwar’s death.

The State Department said on Monday that Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken would tour the Middle East this week, aiming to de-escalate tensions and try to bring the war in Gaza “to an end.”

Complicating that goal, Jewish settlers on Monday, including far-right ministers in the Israeli government, called for the re-establishment of Israeli settlements in Gaza. “If we want it, we can renew settlements in Gaza,” Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s national security minister, was quoted by the Reuters news agency as saying.

Israel dismantled settlements in Gaza in 2005 and withdrew its military after decades of occupation, after which Hamas took control of the enclave. In the intervening years, Israel has continued expanding settlements in the occupied West Bank, a major grievance of Palestinians.

Mr. Blinken has traveled to the region 10 times since the Hamas-led attacks on Israel a year ago. This week’s trip comes as Israel is said to be weighing retaliation against Iran for an Oct. 1 missile barrage that Tehran said was payback for Israel’s killing of Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah. U.S. officials have urged restraint by Israel, for fear that the spiral of strikes and counter-strikes will worsen.

The Israeli authorities said on Monday that they had dismantled a spy network made up of seven Israelis who had been gathering intelligence for Iran. The Israelis, all from the country’s north, were arrested after an investigation concluded that they had conducted intelligence missions for two years under the direction of two Iranian agents, according to a statement by the Israeli police and Shin Bet, the Israeli security agency.

They are suspected of photographing and gathering information on Israeli air force and navy installations, ports, Iron Dome missile-defense systems and a power plant, the statement said.

The Iron Dome and other air-defense systems have blunted rocket, missile and drone attacks into Israel from Gaza, southern Lebanon and Iran. The U.S. defense secretary, Lloyd J. Austin II, said on Monday that an additional piece in that shield sent by the United States, an advanced missile defense system known as THAAD, had arrived in Israel, along with troops to operate it — the first operational deployment of American forces to Israel during the conflict.

Hezbollah has kept up frequent rocket fire at Israel since after the war with Hamas began, and Israel has responded with airstrikes. Last month, Israel sharply escalated its air war against Hezbollah and sent ground forces across the border. As in Gaza, Israel is adhering to its longstanding practice of retaliating with overwhelming force, inflicting far heavier casualties and damage than it has sustained.

Mr. Hochstein told reporters that the only solution to the widening conflict would be administering the terms of the U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701, from the end of the previous Israel-Hezbollah war. It called for U.N. peacekeepers and the Lebanese military to be the only armed forces operating in southern Lebanon, but proved ineffectual in keeping out Hezbollah fighters and weapons.

“The lack of implementation over those years contributed to the conflict that we are in today,” Mr. Hochstein said.

Administering the resolution would mean the withdrawal of Israeli forces and the disarming of Hezbollah along the border. Lebanese officials say Hezbollah is willing to consider such a move.

In the years since Resolution 1701 was passed, Hezbollah has only entrenched itself militarily along Israel’s northern border, amassing a vast arsenal of rockets and missiles. Israel, too, has long been accused of violating Lebanon’s sovereignty, even before embarking on its latest bombing campaign and ground invasion.

The U.N. resolution “was successful at ending the war in 2006, but we must be honest that no one did anything to implement it,” Mr. Hochstein said after meeting with Lebanon’s Parliament speaker, Nabih Berri, a key interlocutor between the United States and Hezbollah.

Mr. Hochstein also met on Monday with the caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, and the commander of the Lebanese armed forces.

“This is a really heartbreaking moment for me to be here in Lebanon,” Mr. Hochstein said, adding, “While we spent 11 months containing the conflict, we were not able to resolve it.”

Mr. Hochstein said the United States would aid Lebanon’s efforts to rebuild from Israeli attacks, but only if the U.N. resolution were fully administered to reduce the chances of conflict breaking out again.

“The world will stand by Lebanon and its leaders if they make the brave and the hard choices that are required at this time,” he said. The comments appeared to be a call for the Lebanese government to push for Hezbollah’s disarmament in southern Lebanon and to deploy more Lebanese troops in its place, as stipulated by the 2006 U.N. resolution.

Hezbollah has said repeatedly that only an end to the war in Gaza will bring about peace. Although top Lebanese officials have said the group is on board with reviving the U.N. resolution, its leaders have publicly pledged to escalate their attacks against Israel. And it remains unclear if Hezbollah would agree to withdraw from southern Lebanon — with or without a cease-fire in Gaza.

Reporting was contributed by Michael Crowley, Eric Schmitt, Shashank Bengali, Ephrat Livni and Johnatan Reiss.

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