The United States and France are working on a cease-fire proposal that would impose a 21-day pause in the recent deadly fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, hoping to avert a wider war and also bolster stalled negotiations between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, France’s foreign minister said on Wednesday.
“Let us take advantage of a number of leaders in New York this week to impose a diplomatic solution to turn around this cycle of violence,” Jean-Noël Barrot, France’s minister for Europe and foreign affairs, told the U.N. Security Council during an emergency session on the crisis. “War is not inevitable, a diplomatic solution is indeed possible.”
Mr. Barrot said the United States and France were working to define the parameters of a way out of the crisis.
“In recent days, we’ve worked with our American partners on a temporary cease-fire platform of 21 days to allow for negotiations,” he said. “This platform will be made public very soon, and we are counting on both parties to execute it without delay in order to protect civilian population and allow for diplomatic negotiations to begin.”
Robert A. Wood, a U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, confirmed to the council that the Biden administration was working with other nations and believed that diplomacy “remains the only path to durably reverse the cycle of escalation” in the region.
“We are working with other countries on a proposal that we hope will enable calm and lead to diplomatic solutions,” he said. “We encourage the Security Council to lend its support to these diplomatic efforts in the coming days.”
The proposal comes amid intense discussions between Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and other diplomats on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York, where leaders from around the globe are confronting the latest violence in the Middle East.
Mr. Barrot and American officials said neither Israel nor Hezbollah had yet signed onto a proposal to end several days of intense fighting along Israel’s northern border with Lebanon, including a wave of fierce airstrikes by Israeli forces that have killed hundreds of people over the past week. But officials said they would try to persuade the two sides to agree to the proposal in the coming days.
Mr. Barrot said he was traveling to Beirut at the end of the week to work with Lebanese officials on supporting a cease-fire.
The immediate goal of the diplomatic effort is to reduce the chance that the deadliest week of fighting between Lebanon and Israel in years will draw the region into a wider conflict that kills many people and destabilizes the region.
But American officials also hope that stepping back from a war with Hezbollah would put pressure on Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’s leader, to agree to a deal that would end nearly a year of fighting in Gaza and lead to the release of the remaining hostages taken during the Oct. 7 attacks.
The push for an end to the fighting comes at what American officials describe as a dangerous new moment in the yearlong spiral of violence, with the possibility of a second front along the border with Lebanon that could draw much bigger players. Hezbollah is supported by Iran, which considers the group its most important proxy in the region.
“An all-out war is possible, but I think there’s also the opportunity — we’re still in play to have a settlement that can fundamentally change the whole region,” President Biden said during an appearance Wednesday on ABC’s “The View.”
The president is under intense pressure to avert that broader conflict, and the clock is ticking. There are 117 days left before Mr. Biden leaves office. He and his aides have been searching — so far unsuccessfully — for a negotiated solution to the violence that would help Mr. Biden burnish his legacy on the world stage.
Mr. Blinken has been shuttling back and forth this week between European and Arab delegations in New York for the U.N. General Assembly to try to clinch the temporary cease-fire, a U.S. official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the closed-door diplomacy.
The efforts have focused on trying to get multiple nations across Europe and the Middle East to agree to the terms of a proposal that would then be presented to Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
On Monday, Mr. Blinken raised the issue at dinner with top diplomats from the Group of 7 nations. He told them that the United States was working on a proposal and wanted to keep efforts coordinated, the official said.
Then on Wednesday morning, at a session with top diplomats of Gulf Arab nations, Mr. Blinken pulled aside Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani of Qatar and got his country’s agreement to support the proposal. At the end of that session, Mr. Blinken did the same with Faisal bin Farhad al-Saud, the foreign minister of Saudi Arabia.
Along with Amos Hochstein, the White House official who conducts diplomacy with Lebanon, Mr. Blinken met with the prime minister of Lebanon, Najib Mikati, on Wednesday. By Wednesday evening, the Biden administration had gotten multiple European and Arab nations on board with the proposed terms, and was ready to announce the proposal.
The new push represents the first time since Oct. 7 that the United States has sought to link the two conflicts involving Israel into a single diplomatic effort.
The logic, according to a second official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic negotiations, is that Hamas has sought to sow regional discord and chaos since the moment of the Oct. 7 attacks by triggering a wider war. As long as Israel is caught in an escalating series of conflicts, officials believe, the leadership of Hamas will not be motivated to reach a deal.
That official said the United States believed that Mr. Sinwar would have less leverage over the situation if the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah stopped and could feel more pressure to agree to a cease-fire deal in Gaza.
The official cautioned that it remained uncertain whether Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader, or the Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was prepared to agree to a halt in the fighting.
Some Israeli military officials have argued for months for a more aggressive response to Hezbollah’s attacks. On Wednesday, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, the Israeli military chief of staff, hinted that a ground invasion in Lebanon was possible.
“You hear the jets overhead; we have been striking all day,” General Halevi told soldiers along Israel’s border with Lebanon. “This is both to prepare the ground for your possible entry and to continue degrading Hezbollah.”
Mr. Nasrallah pledged support for Hamas after the group killed about 1,200 people in a surprise attack last year in Israel. Hezbollah has repeatedly fired missiles and drones into northern Israel, forcing Israelis to flee their homes near the border.
The second official said it was unclear whether Hezbollah’s leader was willing to accept a cease-fire deal without seeing movement toward a similar deal in Gaza, which could complicate the effort.
The diplomacy is being conducted by the United States, with support from France. It comes a week after pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah fighters exploded across Lebanon, killing dozens of people and injuring thousands in an attack apparently orchestrated by Israel.
Israeli officials have not said Israel was responsible for the remote attacks, in which the communications devices were packed with explosives and remotely detonated. But a dozen current and former defense and intelligence officials who were briefed on the attacks said that Israel used shell companies to get into the supply chain and booby-trap the devices.
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