The United States on Monday voiced its opposition to a potential Israeli ground maneuver in Southern Lebanon to push Hezbollah terrorists away from the border.
“We obviously do not believe that a ground invasion of Lebanon is going to contribute to reducing tensions in the region, to preventing an escalatory spiral of violence,” a senior American official told the AFP news agency a day before the high-level General Debate of the 79th United Nations General Assembly in New York.
The official said that the United States was against IDF troops crossing the border as it works on a diplomatic “off-ramp” to the escalating conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.
“We’ve got some concrete ideas we’re going to be discussing with allies and partners this week to try to figure out the way forward on this,” the official said, adding that Washington wants to find an “off-ramp that will first and foremost prevent further escalation in the fighting.”
He said that the hope is that the U.S. proposals “reduce tensions and will segue into a diplomatic process that allows communities on both sides of the border—on both sides of the Blue Line—to safely return home in the near future.”
Hezbollah has fired more than 8,800 rockets, missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) toward Israel since Oct. 8 when it joined the war in support of Hamas in Gaza. The strikes have forced over 60,000 Israelis to evacuate from northern communities, severely impacting daily life in the region.
Jerusalem has ramped up its rhetoric and escalated attacks on Hezbollah since recently adding the return of residents to the north as an official war goal.
The U.S. official also disagreed with Jerusalem’s stance that military pressure creates the conditions for a diplomatic resolution. He said that the Biden administration was focused on “reducing tensions…and breaking the cycle of strike-counterstrike.”
The official added: “I can’t recall, at least in recent memory, a period in which an escalation or intensification led to a fundamental deescalation and led to profound stabilization of the situation.”
Over the weekend, the United States asked Israel to ensure the safety of Americans in Lebanon if Washington decides to evacuate thousands of its citizens amid ongoing hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah.
This was reported by Axios, citing two Israeli officials and one American official.
The last time that the United States evacuated its citizens from Lebanon was during the 2006 Second Lebanon War.
