Firas Maksad, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, written on X that there is still time for the main players to find a diplomatic solution. Mr. Hochstein said his trip would likely take place on Wednesday. “The diplomatic window is closing but not completely,” he said.
Mr. Blinken, speaking Monday at the Brookings Institution, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, said he did not believe the main parties in the border conflict — Israel, Hezbollah and Iran — actually wanted to go to war, but that was where the “dynamics” of the clashes could lead. U.S. officials worry that such a conflict could force the United States to defend Israel.
“Nobody really wants war,” Mr. Blinken said. He said that Iran, a staunch enemy of Israel, “wants to make sure that Hezbollah is not destroyed and that they can keep Hezbollah as a card if they need to, if they have a direct conflict with Israel.”
About 60,000 Israelis have fled the border conflict, many of them living in Tel Aviv hotels for nine months. Referring to that situation, Mr. Blinken said, “Israel has effectively lost sovereignty in the northern corner of the country because people don’t feel safe going home.” The fighting has also displaced tens of thousands of people in southern Lebanon.
“If we don’t do something about the unrest, people won’t have the confidence to come back,” Mr Blinken said, adding that to address the issue, there needs to be an agreement to pull back troops from the border.
Mr Blinken noted that Hezbollah had said that if a ceasefire was reached in Gaza, it would stop firing at Israel. That “highlights why a ceasefire in Gaza is so important,” he said. But the latest round of talks between Israel and Hamas appear to have stalled.
Mr. Hochstein has has met in recent weeks with Israeli officials as well as Lebanese officialswho could convey messages to and from Hezbollah, in an effort to negotiate Hezbollah’s withdrawal to a position far enough from the border to satisfy Israel. In return, Israel could withdraw from some disputed border areas and the United States could provide economic aid to southern Lebanon, analysts said.
