A US envoy said Thursday both Lebanon and Israel “prefer” a diplomatic deal to end hostilities on the border, where Hezbollah and Israeli forces have exchanged fire since the Gaza war began.
“We need to find a diplomatic solution that will allow for the Lebanese people to return to their homes in south Lebanon… as the people of Israel need to be able to return to their homes in their north,” Amos Hochstein told reporters in Beirut.
After a visit to Israel, Hochstein on Thursday met top Lebanese officials in Beirut, amid fears that the Israel-Hamas war since early October could spread across the region.
The deadly violence along the Lebanon-Israel border has already displaced tens of thousands of civilians on either side of the frontier.
“We’re living in a crisis moment where we would like to see a diplomatic solution and I believe that both sides prefer a diplomatic solution,” the US envoy said, adding: “It’s our job to get one”.
Hochstein, US President Joe Biden’s special coordinator for global infrastructure and energy security, sat down with Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati, the powerful parliament speaker Nabih Berri and army chief Joseph Aoun.
In October 2022, Hochstein brokered what Biden called a “historic” maritime accord between Israel and Lebanon, which have no diplomatic relations, paving the way for both countries to exploit offshore gas reserves.
In a televised interview earlier this week, Mikati said a potential deal to curb tensions along the border with Israel may be “linked” to the fighting raging in the besieged Gaza Strip.
“We are working on a diplomatic solution to the situation in the south, and its implementation will perhaps be linked to ending the assault on Gaza,” he said.
A European diplomatic source, requesting anonymity as they are not allowed to speak to the press, told AFP that a diplomatic solution would include settling border disputes and possibly an Israeli withdrawal from disputed areas.
The powerful Iran-backed Hezbollah movement, an ally of Palestinian militant group Hamas, has signalled willingness to endorse a diplomatic solution.
Last week, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah hailed “a historic opportunity” to help Lebanon regain control of disputed border land, “after this phase (of fighting) ends and after the aggression on Gaza”.
The same day, Israel’s Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said his government “prefers a diplomatic path over a military one”, but warned: “We are close to the point of the hour glass turning over”.
Escalating tensions have prompted a succession of Western diplomats to converge on Beirut to urge restraint and discuss potential solutions to avoid Lebanon being dragged into war.
On Wednesday, visiting German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock warned in Beirut that an escalation on the Israeli border “would be a catastrophe for the two countries”.
The European Union’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell on Saturday met a Hezbollah political official during a visit in Beirut.
More than three months of cross-border violence have killed 190 people in Lebanon, including more than 140 Hezbollah fighters and over 20 civilians including three journalists, according to an AFP tally.
In northern Israel, nine soldiers and at least four civilians have been killed, according to Israeli authorities.
The last Israel-Hezbollah war, in 2006, killed more than 1,200 people in Lebanon, mostly civilians, and 160 in Israel, mostly soldiers. The two countries remain technically at war.
