Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant said Friday: “We prefer the path of the agreed-upon diplomatic settlement, but we are approaching the point where the hourglass will turn.”
US officials are concerned that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will see expanding fighting in Lebanon as essential to his political survival amid domestic criticism of his government's failure to prevent the October 7 Hamas attack, which killed an estimated 1,200 people and took about 240 hostages. . It will be transferred to Gaza.
In private conversations, the administration warned Israel of a major escalation in Lebanon. If it did, a new classified assessment from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) found that it would be difficult for the IDF to succeed because its military assets and resources would be spread too thin given the conflict in Gaza. , according to two people familiar with these findings. A DIA spokesman did not provide any comment.
More than a dozen administration officials and diplomats spoke to The Washington Post for this report, some on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive military situation between Israel and Lebanon.
Hezbollah, a longtime US foe with well-trained fighters and tens of thousands of rockets and missiles, wants to avoid a major escalation, according to US officials, who say the group's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, is seeking to stay away from a broader war. . In a speech on Friday, Nasrallah pledged to respond to Israeli aggression, while hinting that he might be open to negotiations on border demarcation with Israel.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken is scheduled to arrive in Israel on Monday where he will discuss specific steps “to avoid escalation,” his spokesman Matt Miller said before boarding a plane to the Middle East.
“It is in no one’s interest – not Israel, not the region, not the world – for this conflict to spread beyond Gaza,” Miller said. But this view is not held uniformly within the Israeli government.
Since the Hamas attack in October, Israeli officials have discussed launching a pre-emptive attack on Hezbollah, US officials said. Which This possibility has faced persistent US opposition because of the possibility of drawing Iran, which supports both groups, and other proxy forces into the conflict – a possibility that could force the United States to respond militarily on behalf of Israel.
Officials fear that a large-scale conflict between Israel and Lebanon could surpass the bloodshed seen in the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war, due to Hezbollah's much larger arsenal of long-range and precision weapons. “The number of casualties in Lebanon could range between 300,000 and 500,000, which would necessitate a large-scale evacuation of the entire north of Israel,” said Bilal Saab, an expert on Lebanese affairs at the Middle East Institute, a think tank in Washington.
Hezbollah may strike Israel deeper than before, striking sensitive targets such as petrochemical plants and nuclear reactors, and Iran may activate militias throughout the region. “I don’t think it will be limited to these two opponents,” he said.
The threat of a broader conflict continued to grow on Saturday, as Hezbollah fired about 40 rockets into Israel in response to the suspected assassination of senior Hamas leader Saleh al-Arouri and six others in an airstrike in Israel. The suburbs of Beirut, the capital of Lebanon, a few days ago.
In recent weeks, regular shootings between Israel and Hezbollah along the border have become more aggressive, drawing particular criticism from Washington, US officials said.
According to US intelligence reviewed by the newspaper, the Israeli military has struck US-funded and trained Lebanese Armed Forces positions more than 34 times since October 7, officials familiar with the matter said.
The United States considers the Lebanese Army the main defender of Lebanon's sovereignty and a major counterweight to the influence of Iran-backed Hezbollah.
On December 5, four shells from Israeli tank fire killed a Lebanese Armed Forces soldier and wounded three others. On December 8, Israeli artillery fire containing white phosphorous hit Lebanese Army installations, wounding a Lebanese Armed Forces soldier who inhaled the harmful fumes. On November 4, Israeli fire on a Lebanese army position in Sarda created a “big hole.” “In the structure of the Lebanese Army,” according to American intelligence. Some details of these attacks were previously reported by CNN.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment on the Israeli strikes, however White House The National Security Council confirmed that Washington had informed Israel that attacks on the Lebanese army and Lebanese civilians were “completely unacceptable.”
A National Security Council official said the Biden administration had been “very direct and tough” with the Israelis on the issue, and said the injuries and deaths among the Lebanese Armed Forces were unacceptable.
The official also said that the priority is to maintain the credibility of the Lebanese army, and that the international community must do everything in its power to back and support them, as they will be a vital element in any “day after” scenario in Lebanon. Hezbollah has become weak and poses less of a threat to Israel.
The official stressed, however, that Hezbollah poses a “legitimate threat” to Israel and said the Jewish state has the right to defend itself.
An Israeli official told the newspaper that Israel is not intentionally targeting Lebanese Armed Forces positions and blamed Hezbollah for escalating tensions.
Hezbollah began firing into Israeli territory, without provocation, on October 8, and has continued to do so on a daily basis, firing thousands of shells. Israel was forced to respond in self-defense,” the official said.
“As a result of Hezbollah’s aggression, tens of thousands of Israelis were forced to leave their homes. The State of Israel will not return to the pre-war situation in which Hezbollah poses a direct and immediate military threat to its security along the Israeli-Lebanese border,” the official added.
A senior US administration official said that when Israeli officials first raised the idea of attacking Hezbollah during the early days of the conflict in Gaza, US officials immediately raised objections.
Israeli officials were initially convinced that the Lebanese armed group was behind the Hamas incursion It received bad intelligence that a Hezbollah attack was imminent in the days after October 7, according to two senior US officials. There were deep fears in Israel that the government would not notice signs of another violent attack.
The senior administration official said Biden was on the phone as many as three times a day, in part to dissuade Israel from attacking Hezbollah — a move that would have caused “all hell to break loose,” the official said. Israelis' deep concerns about the threat influenced Biden's decision to travel to Tel Aviv less than two weeks after the Hamas attack, according to a senior official.
The risk of Israel launching an ambitious attack on Hezbollah has never gone away, White House and State Department officials said, but there has been broader concern about escalation in recent weeks, especially since Israel announced a temporary withdrawal of several thousand troops from Gaza. On January 1 – a decision that could open up resources for a military operation in the north.
“They have more freedom to escalate,” a US official said.
Another American official said that the forces that Israel withdrew from Gaza could be deployed in the north after sufficient time to rest and prepare for another wave of fighting. But Israel's air force is also exhausted, having carried out continuous strikes since the war began in October, the official said, explaining the Defense Intelligence Agency's assessment that escalation in Lebanon would scatter Israeli forces.
The official said the pilots are tired, and the planes must be maintained and re-equipped. They will face more dangerous missions in Lebanon than in Gaza, where Hamas has few anti-aircraft defenses to shoot down attacking aircraft.
On Thursday, Biden sent his special envoy, Amos Hochstein, to Israel to work on an agreement to reduce tensions on the Lebanese-Israeli border. The near-term goal is to develop a process to begin negotiating a territorial demarcation agreement that could determine where and how the two sides deploy forces along the border in an attempt to stabilize the situation.
American and French officials are in discussions with the Lebanese government about a proposal that would have the Lebanese government control part of the Lebanese-Israeli border, rather than Hezbollah, to help allay Israeli concerns, according to two people familiar with the talks.
The White House declined to provide details of the plan.
“We continue to explore and exhaust all diplomatic options with our Israeli and Lebanese partners,” the National Security Council official said. Returning Israeli and Lebanese citizens to their homes and living in peace and security is of the utmost importance to the United States.
American officials acknowledge that Hezbollah is unlikely to agree to a border deal while dozens of Palestinians in Gaza are being killed or injured as a result of the Israeli military campaign there.
There are different perceptions within the administration about Netanyahu's interest in reaching a negotiated solution to the conflict with Hezbollah. A senior US official said the Israeli leader's pledge to bring about “fundamental change” to address the border fighting with Hezbollah is merely a threat aimed at extracting concessions from the Lebanese group. Others said that if the Gaza war ended tomorrow, Netanyahu's political career would end with it, which would motivate him to expand the conflict.
“Netanyahu’s political logic is to rebound after the historic failure on October 7 and achieve some kind of success to show to the Israeli public,” said Saab, an expert on Lebanon affairs. “I'm not sure that going after Hezbollah is the right way to do it because that campaign is going to be much more challenging than the one in Gaza.”
When asked whether political incentives were driving Netanyahu's military ambitions, a senior Israeli government official said only that “the prime minister will continue to take the necessary steps to secure Israel and its future.”
Before heading to Jordan, Blinken said that easing tensions on the border is “something we are working on very actively.”
He added: “It is clear that this is a strongly shared interest” among the countries of the region.
Abu Talib and Harris reported from Washington.
