American officials said on Monday that they believed they had persuaded Israel not to conduct a major ground invasion of southern Lebanon.
The understanding came after intense talks over the weekend. The United States saw some signs that Israel was preparing to move into Lebanon, and some American officials believed a major ground operation was imminent.
After the discussions, U.S. officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence and diplomatic negotiations, said they believed Israel was planning only smaller, targeted incursions into southern Lebanon. The recent raids by Israeli special operations forces would be designed to eliminate fighting positions from which Hezbollah has attacked towns in northern Israel.
But Israeli officials assured their American counterparts that they did not intend to follow up those incursions with a bigger operation by conventional forces or by occupying parts of southern Lebanon. U.S. officials said they believed the commandos would quickly pull back after the operations were finished.
It is not clear if Israel has made a final decision, and it is possible that a full-scale invasion could still follow targeted raids, despite the White House’s concerns.
On Monday, after the raids became public, U.S. officials said the possibility of “mission creep” remained, and that Israel could decide it needed to support the raids with a larger force. But for now, American officials believe, Israel will not conduct a full-scale invasion.
U.S. officials have tried to prevent a wider regional conflict since the war in Gaza began last October after Hamas-led attacks in Israel.
Israel eventually cut back the intensity of its bombing campaign in Gaza, but months after the U.S. military had urged a shift to more targeted operations. The United States wanted the Israeli military to eschew major combat operations and said that operations in the city of Rafah needed to be more precise. The eventual Israeli operations in Rafah were extensive, though Israel did bend to U.S. recommendations to allow an orderly humanitarian evacuation of the area.
This month, some officials in the U.S. government have watched the Israeli operations against Hezbollah anxiously, fearing that the extensive attacks would provoke Iran to join the fight far more openly. But other officials believe that Israel’s actions have dramatically curbed Hezbollah’s military power. The risk of Iranian intervention remains, American officials said, but it is possible that Israel’s attacks on Hezbollah will not unleash a large-scale regional conflict.
Still, to keep the wider conflict in check, American officials want to persuade Israel not to move large number of forces into Lebanon. U.S. and French officials had been pushing for a cease-fire proposal, which initially had Israel’s support. But after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel authorized the strike on Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, U.S. officials said that for now their cease-fire plan had been withdrawn.
Despite hitting pause on the cease-fire, Americans have tried to convince Israeli officials that a ground invasion would be counterproductive.
American intelligence agencies stuck by their assessment throughout September that any sort of large-scale invasion of southern Lebanon would court disaster. While Israel’s strikes have diminished Hezbollah’s caches of weapons and hurt its ability to launch rocket attacks, the group’s forces maintain dug-in positions in the hilly and easily defended terrain of southern Lebanon.
The Hezbollah tunnel network largely remains intact, and American officials assessed that Hezbollah fighters would be able to move through it quickly to ambush advancing Israeli forces.
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