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BEIRUT – As Israel announces the withdrawal of its forces in the northern Gaza Strip, the United States is working to prevent a second all-out war in Lebanon, with Israeli officials warning that time for diplomacy is running out.
According to a Western diplomat and three Lebanese officials, Israel told Washington in late December that Israel would escalate its fight with Hezbollah if a long-term border agreement with Lebanon cannot be reached in the next few weeks – a scenario that both the Biden administration and The European countries represented have also tried vigorously to avoid this.
It was clear to officials familiar with the talks that Israel was eyeing late January as a target for a deal.
A senior US official told The Washington Post that the Israelis had not given a “hard deadline” for expanding their military campaign against Hezbollah, but acknowledged that the window for negotiations was narrowing. Like others in this article, the official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive and ongoing conversations.
Responding to questions about Israel's demands, Lior Haiat, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, said: “The Israeli position is that we prefer a diplomatic solution, and if a diplomatic solution is not possible, we must act on our own.”
Israel's talk of expanding the war into Lebanon worries the US
Israel has already fought two wars with Hezbollah – the Iran-aligned militant group and political party allied with Hamas – and Israeli forces have exchanged daily fire with its fighters for months. Northern Israel and southern Lebanon have become military zones virtually devoid of civilians, and the death toll, mostly among combatants, has quietly risen on both sides.
White House envoy Amos Hochstein arrived in Beirut last week to convey Israel's proposal for a temporary solution to the conflict. The proposal described by Lebanese officials and the Western diplomat calls for Hezbollah to withdraw its troops a few miles north and for the Lebanese army to increase its presence in the area, effectively creating a buffer zone between the militants and the Israeli border.
There has never been a true buffer zone in southern Lebanon. The next attempt came in 1985, three years after Israeli forces invaded Lebanon, when Israel partially withdrew from the south, leaving an allied Christian militia in control of the territory it administered.
After Israel's complete withdrawal from the country in 2000, the United Nations peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon, known as UNIFIL, spread out along the Blue Line, a temporary border marker.
It has been a flashpoint since then, most recently erupting in 2006 when Israel and Hezbollah fought a bloody and inconclusive war for 34 days. In Washington, European capitals and Beirut, officials fear history is repeating itself.
Hezbollah leaders don't want a full-scale war with Israel, two U.S. officials said, but they may oppose a border deal while hundreds of Palestinians are still being killed every day in Gaza.
The talks led by Hochstein offer at least the possibility of detente and a roadmap that both sides can pursue once fighting in Gaza subsides, the officials said.
Yet Israel has given no indication that a ceasefire is imminent. And negotiations with Lebanon appear to be going slowly.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken traveled to Israel last week, where he urged officials not to escalate hostilities in the north. “It is clearly not in the interests of anyone — Israel, Lebanon or Hezbollah — for this to escalate,” Blinken said.
The White House declined to comment for this story.
A border deal would theoretically allow around 70,000 displaced Israelis to return to their homes in the north – a priority for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is widely accused in Israel of failing to prevent the Hamas-led attack on October 7 and not doing more to do so to support those whose lives have been turned upside down by the conflict. Tens of thousands have also been displaced in Lebanon, and authorities in Beirut will need a deal to sell to a weary public.
An aid stop for people fleeing the conflict at a school in southern Lebanon
“I don't believe [the Lebanese government] “I would accept half solutions,” said one of the officials familiar with the talks. The issue of the Israelis' return is “their problem,” the official added. “Where is the win-win situation? [Lebanon]?”
Publicly, Hezbollah appeared to reject the Israeli proposal. In a speech on Sunday, the group's leader, Hasan Nasrallah, reiterated his position that a ceasefire in Gaza would be a precursor to diplomatic talks or a cessation of fighting on the border.
Washington has “pressured Lebanon for the sake of Israel to stop and paralyze this front,” said Nasrallah. “Let the aggression against Gaza stop, and after that we can discuss issues affecting Lebanon.”
Hezbollah is Lebanon's most powerful political party – it has the most seats in parliament alongside its allies – and its military prowess is believed to rival that of Lebanon's official army, which has been weakened by years of government corruption and economic mismanagement became.
In a speech on January 5, Nasrallah publicly raised for the first time the possibility of defining his land borders with Israel, which Hochstein had already pushed for before October 7.
Lebanon and Israel only demarcated their maritime borders in 2022, in an agreement brokered by Hochstein after 11 years of scattered negotiations. The deal was accelerated by Lebanon's economic crisis, which pressured the government to allow companies to exploit gas fields in the eastern Mediterranean.
Hochstein and other Western officials have pushed Lebanon and Israel to implement a 2006 United Nations resolution, known as 1701, that requires armed personnel, assets and weapons not belonging to the Lebanese government or UNIFIL the area is withdrawn from the border to the Litani River, about 25 miles north.
Many Hezbollah fighters come from the south and the group has long held power there. Under the terms of the resolution, its soldiers would withdraw north of the river and “the weapons would be put away again,” said an official close to Hezbollah, speaking on condition of anonymity under rules set by the group.
If implemented, 1701 would lead to territorial gains for Lebanon: the resolution requires Israel to withdraw from occupied areas such as the northern part of the village of Ghajar. The resolution would also force Israel to stop using Lebanese airspace for attacks in Syria.
According to an official familiar with the talks, Lebanon may hold negotiations with Israel over border demarcation before a ceasefire in Gaza because that condition was set by Hezbollah, not the government. However, an acceptable deal must be done “as a package,” not in pieces, the official added, and must be approved by Hezbollah.
Any agreement would also have to be signed by the Lebanese president, adding a further complication in a country that has been without a head of state since October 2022 due to political stalemate.
Lebanese officials and Hezbollah expect Israel's bitter war in Gaza, coupled with growing pressure from the families of Israeli hostages still held by Hamas, will force the government to make concessions in the north. But they may be misreading the political winds in Jerusalem.
Israelis fear a new war with Hezbollah on the Lebanese border
Israel recently killed Hamas leader Saleh Arouri in a drone strike in a Hezbollah stronghold in Beirut. On Tuesday, Israel hit southern Lebanon with its largest single shelling since hostilities began.
There is significant support within Israel's defense establishment for a larger fight with Hezbollah, which senior officials say could be crucial to curbing Iranian ambitions in the region.
“We are fighting an axis, not a single enemy,” Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal on Sunday.
“I don't know when the war will take place in the north, but the probability that it will take place in the coming months is higher than before,” Israel's army chief Herzi Halevi told soldiers during a visit to the north on Wednesday. “If we have to, we will move forward with all our might.”
Such a move would be costly for Israel but also strategically sound, said Chuck Freilich, a former Israeli deputy national security adviser.
Israel's military is already fully activated and has numerous reservists who have improved their combat skills in Gaza. The presence of an American aircraft carrier group in the Red Sea could help deter Iran from directly joining the fight.
“If you believe that war with Hezbollah is inevitable, as many in Israel do, then now is exactly the right time for it,” Freilich said.
The Biden administration has privately and repeatedly warned Israel of significant escalation in Lebanon, The Post recently reported, and assured Lebanese officials that it is working to contain the conflict.
When the Pentagon announced that the USS Gerald R. Ford, which was stationed in the eastern Mediterranean to support Israel after Oct. 7, would return home in early January, authorities in Beirut said saw this as a serious signal of US de-escalation.
“They don't want to drag Lebanon into war and they don't want the Israelis to shift their escalation from Gaza to Lebanon,” said a Lebanese official familiar with ongoing talks with Washington.
“They put pressure on the Israelis, but the Israelis don’t really respond,” he added. The only solution that would be accepted in Lebanon is the full implementation of 1701, he continued.
A full-scale war between Israel and Hezbollah would result in “mutually assured destruction,” the official said, estimating that Hezbollah has about five times more rockets than Hamas.
“All resistance organizations in the region will join this war,” he predicted – referring to Iran and its armed proxies in Yemen, which have already carried out attacks on merchant ships in the Red Sea as well as in Iraq and Syria, where militants This was done by targeted US forces.
“These groups are often trained by Hezbollah,” he said. “They will stand up to defend them.”
Hudson reported from Washington. Steve Hendrix in Jerusalem and Lior Soroka in Tel Aviv contributed to this report.