Even as the Biden administration renewed its push for a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel threatened tougher military action against Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Two days after the militant group launched a barrage of rockets and exploding drones from Lebanon into northern Israel, igniting several wildfires, Mr. Netanyahu visited soldiers and firefighters in the area and said the Israeli military was ready to strike.
“Whoever thinks he can hurt us and we will respond by sitting on our hands is making a big mistake,” he said, according to the Israeli government. “We are prepared for very intense action in the north.”
Against the backdrop of escalating tensions on the Israel-Lebanon border, the C.I.A. director, William J. Burns, met on Wednesday with top Qatari and Egyptian officials in the latest effort to broker a deal to end the fighting in Gaza and free the hostages taken captive during the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct 7.
Mr. Burns met in Doha with the Qatari prime minister, Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, and the chief of Egypt’s General Intelligence Service, Abbas Kamel, according to an official briefed on the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the closed-door encounter.
The Qatari prime minister and Mr. Kamel also met Hamas leaders in Doha on Wednesday, according to the official. Egypt and Qatar have been key mediators between Israel and Hamas, which do not talk directly to each other.
The meeting with Mr. Burns focused on finding ways to bring Israel and Hamas closer to a cease-fire, according to the official, who said that Qatar had received a positive preliminary response from Hamas to a cease-fire proposal endorsed last week by President Biden, but was still waiting for a formal reply.
Outlining the proposal on Friday, Mr. Biden described it as a three-phase plan proffered by Israel to Hamas that would begin with a six-week pause in fighting and ultimately lead to the “cessation of hostilities permanently” and the rebuilding of Gaza.
Even though Mr. Biden described the proposal as an Israeli offer, Mr. Netanyahu has not publicly endorsed the terms as described by the American president. He told Israeli lawmakers on Monday that he was open to a six-week pause in the war, according to a person who attended the closed-door discussion.
But in public, Mr. Netanyahu has continued to insist that Israel will not stop fighting in Gaza until Hamas’s military and governing capabilities are destroyed. Two of Mr. Netanyahu’s far-right ministers have threatened to leave his coalition and bring down his government if he agrees to any deal that leaves Hamas intact.
Addressing questions about whether Israeli officials were truly supportive of the cease-fire plan outlined by Mr. Biden, Jake Sullivan, the U.S. national security adviser, said on Wednesday that it was “still a live proposal.”
“Israel is a raucous democracy, so there is a lot of talk and a lot of chatter,” Mr. Sullivan said on NBC’s “Today” show. “But the Israeli government has reconfirmed repeatedly, as recently as today, that that proposal is still on the table, and now it’s up to Hamas to accept it.”
A senior Hamas official, Basem Naim, on Wednesday repeated the group’s position that it would not agree to any deal that did not provide for a permanent cease-fire. Mr. Naim also said that “it doesn’t make sense” for Hamas to negotiate while Israeli forces launch attacks in Gaza.
“The thirsty will drink a little and the hungry will eat a little, and then after a month and a half we will return to being killed,” he said.
Amid such disagreements, Mr. Burns’s visit to Doha wasn’t expected to bring about major progress, said a second person briefed on the negotiations, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the talks. Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader in Gaza and the presumed mastermind of the Oct. 7 terrorist attack on Israel, still had to weigh in on the latest proposal, that person said.
Without an agreement to stop the fighting, Israel said on Wednesday that it had launched an offensive in central Gaza, hitting the region with air and artillery strikes and sending in ground troops that clashed with Hamas militants.
Dozens of people have been killed, according to health workers in Gaza, who warned that the only remaining hospital in the area had been inundated with wounded patients.
In the past 24 hours, the Gazan Health Ministry said it had recorded 36 dead and 115 injured without saying how many were combatants. The international aid group Doctors Without Borders said that at least 70 bodies, most of them women and children, had been brought to the Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in central Gaza since Tuesday. The Israeli military declined to comment on the reports.
“The odor of blood in the hospital’s emergency room this morning was unbearable,” Karin Huster, a medical adviser for Doctors Without Borders in Gaza, said in a statement. “There are people lying everywhere, on the floor, outside.”
Israel’s military said it was conducting military operations “above and below ground” against Hamas militants in Bureij and the eastern part of Deir al-Balah, both in central Gaza, and that it had “eliminated” several.
Hamas also reported clashes with Israeli forces in the area, and said on Wednesday that it had fired missiles at Israeli troops in the east of Bureij.
“There is no place to flee to now,” said Hani Ahmed, a teacher and father of five who lives near the center of Bureij, and said two buildings in his area had been struck.
“Khan Younis is rubble. Rafah is under attack. The north is destroyed,” Mr. Ahmad said. “I might take my family in my small bus and live at the beach as I have no tent. We are terrified.”
As the bloodshed in Gaza continued, there was growing talk in Israel of going to war in Lebanon against Hezbollah militants, who have been trading strikes with Israeli forces for months, forcing more than 150,000 people on both sides of the border to flee.
Israeli military officials said this week that they were growing increasingly frustrated with Hezbollah’s attacks. On Wednesday, at least nine people were wounded after an explosive hit Hurfeish, a village in northern Israel, according to an Israeli hospital official.
“We are approaching the point in which a decision needs to be made, and the I.D.F. is ready and prepared for that decision,” Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, the Israeli military’s chief of staff, said on Tuesday.
Far-right leaders in Israel have been calling for war against Hezbollah. “The time has come,” Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s finance minister, said on social media on Wednesday.
Matthew Miller, a State Department spokesman, said on Wednesday that the Biden administration remained “incredibly concerned” about the risk of escalation between Israel and Hezbollah.
“That said, the government of Israel has long maintained — privately to us, and they’ve said it publicly, too — that their preferred solution to this conflict is a diplomatic one, and we continue to pursue a diplomatic resolution,” Mr. Miller said.
Israel invaded Lebanon in 1978, 1982 and 2006 in attempts to root out militants who launched attacks into Israel. It occupied southern Lebanon from 1982 to 2000, when it withdrew its last troops, ending what Prime Minister Ehud Barak called an “18-year tragedy.”
Adding to the mounting tensions in Lebanon, a gunman opened fire on the U.S. Embassy in Beirut on Wednesday and was then shot and captured by Lebanese security forces. The embassy said that a security guard had been wounded in the attack.
The Lebanese Army identified the gunman as a Syrian citizen and said he was being treated at a hospital. Mr. Miller, the State Department spokesman, said the gunman had “what appeared to be ISIS insignia, but we are conducting a full investigation with the Lebanese authorities into the actual motivations.”
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