Top Biden Aide Visits Israel Amid Fears of Escalation With Hezbollah

One of President Biden’s most trusted advisers met with officials in Israel on Monday amid deepening concern that months of cross-border violence between Israel and Hezbollah, the powerful Lebanese militia, could escalate into a larger regional war.

Hezbollah and Israel’s military have been trading near-daily fire since last October, when the start of the war in Gaza prompted the Iran-backed militia to launch rocket attacks on northern Israel in solidarity with Hamas.

The cross-border clashes have intensified in recent months, and Israel’s reduced combat operations in Gaza have freed up more of its forces for a possible offensive in the north against Hezbollah.

The visit by the adviser, Amos Hochstein, is part of efforts by the Biden administration to prevent “an escalation and a widening of this conflict,” John Kirby, a White House spokesman, told reporters last week.

“Amos’s travels are very much a continuation of the diplomacy that he’s been conducting now for many months to try to prevent a second front from opening up in the north there,” he said.

Mr. Hochstein met with Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, and also was expected to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday. He has already made at least five trips to Israel and Lebanon since Mr. Biden tasked him with trying to prevent the clashes from expanding into a war that could be even more devastating than the conflict in Gaza.

Statements by Israeli officials in recent days suggest that the window for negotiating a political settlement to the spiraling conflict in the north might be closing.

Mr. Gallant said on Monday that he had informed U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III in an overnight phone call that time was “running out” for a diplomatic solution.

“Hezbollah continues to ‘tie itself’ to Hamas,” Mr. Gallant said in a statement. “The trajectory is clear.”

And Mr. Netanyahu told a meeting of government officials on Sunday that the situation in Israel’s north “will not continue.”

The strikes have driven more than 150,000 people in Israel and Lebanon from their homes in the border region. Those who have fled their homes in Lebanon have received little assistance from the government, which is in the middle of a prolonged financial crisis. In Israel, the government has paid to feed and house evacuees in hundreds of hotels across the country.

In his remarks on Sunday, Mr. Netanyahu said “we will do whatever is necessary to return our residents securely to their homes.”

Mr. Hochstein’s mediation efforts have involved repeated rounds of shuttle diplomacy between Beirut and Jerusalem. Because the United States designates Hezbollah a terrorist group, Mr. Hochstein has communicated with it through Lebanese government officials who act as interlocutors.

France — which maintains direct lines of communication with Hezbollah — has been pursuing its own diplomatic solution at the same time. In recent months, Mr. Hochstein has sought to better coordinate efforts with French officials, who have also been vocal about the risk of military escalation.

On Monday, France’s ambassador to Israel, Frédéric Journès, also warned of a wider conflict.

“If a full-scale war starts in Lebanon, it could turn this whole thing into a regional conflict, and then you have a regional conflict in Ukraine and a second regional conflict in the Middle East,” he said at the Haaretz National Security Conference in Israel.

“Nobody wants this war,” he added. “Iran doesn’t want it, Hezbollah doesn’t want it and Israel doesn’t want it, and yet it is very possible that it happens.”

Despite the warnings, the tit-for-tat violence continued on Monday. Israel’s military said that it had struck Hezbollah “infrastructure” in southern Lebanon on Monday after “a number of projectiles” crossed from the country into Israeli territory.

That followed Israeli artillery fire and airstrikes on southern Lebanon over the weekend in response to Hezbollah rockets that had triggered air-raid sirens and sparked brush fires in northern Israel.

Fears of a broader conflagration have risen since an Israeli airstrike in late July killed a senior Hezbollah commander in the Beirut suburbs. Iran threatened to strike Israel over the killing of a Hamas leader on its soil shortly after that.

Israeli officials have taken pains to emphasize their readiness. On Monday, Israel’s defense ministry said it had equipped 97 “rapid response units” in towns along the northern border with Lebanon with “combat and rescue gear, medical supplies, uniforms and protective equipment.”

Here’s what else is happening in the Middle East:

Polio in Gaza: Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the main U.N. agency that aids Palestinians in Gaza, said on Monday that the first round of a polio vaccination campaign in the Gaza Strip had been successfully completed, with hundreds of thousands of children vaccinated. The next stage of the campaign aims to administer a second vaccine dose to each child by the end of September, he added.
West Bank Violence: Israeli settlers attacked a Palestinian school in the occupied West Bank and wounded seven people, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent and Palestinian new media. In a clip shared widely on X, three men armed with batons and speaking Hebrew are seen beating people in a school courtyard. The Times verified the location of the footage to a school northwest of Jericho in the occupied West Bank. The Israeli military said it had responded to the scene, where “a number of Palestinians were injured.” Since the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel and the start of the war in Gaza, attacks by Jewish settlers on Palestinians across the West Bank have surged.
Netanyahu’s rival goes to Washington: Yair Lapid, the leader of Israel’s parliamentary opposition, was in Washington on Monday. His office said he was scheduled to meet with Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and Jake Sullivan, the White House national security adviser. Mr. Lapid, a vocal critic and rival of Mr. Netanyahu, made a similar diplomatic trip to the U.S. capital in April.