By AAMER MADHANI, MATTHEW LEE and DARLENE SUPERVILLE
NEW YORK (AP) — President Joe Biden said Wednesday that fighting between Israel and Hezbollah threatens to become an “all-out war” as his top diplomat and other advisers worked behind the scenes pressing for a temporary cease-fire to calm the escalating conflict that has killed more than 600 people in Lebanon in recent days.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the U.S. administration was “intensely engaged with a number of partners to de-escalate tensions in Lebanon and to work to get a cease-fire agreement that would have so many benefits for all concerned.”
Blinken and other U.S. officials have spent the past three days at and on the sidelines of the annual U.N. General Assembly meeting of world leaders in New York lobbying other countries to support the plan, which they hope could lead to longer-term stability along the border between Israel and Lebanon, according to U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic conversations.
However, they said the specifics of the proposal were not yet complete. The Biden administration efforts came as hostilities have mounted between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah militants in Lebanon that have killed hundreds, driven tens of thousands of people from their homes in northern Israel and southern Lebanon, and rekindled fears of a broader war in the Middle East.
An Israeli official said Netanyahu has given the green light to pursue a possible deal, but only if it includes the return of Israeli civilians to their homes. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they were discussing behind-the-scenes diplomacy.
Earlier Wednesday, Biden warned in an appearance on ABC’s “The View” that “an all-out war is possible” but thinks the opportunity also exists “to have a settlement that can fundamentally change the whole region.”
Biden suggested that getting Israel and Hezbollah to agree to a cease-fire could help achieve a cessation of hostilities between Israel and Hamas militants in Gaza. That war is approaching the one-year mark on Oct. 7 when Hamas, another Iranian-backed militant group, invaded southern Israel, and has caused tens of thousands of deaths, the majority being of Palestinians in Gaza.
“It’s possible and I’m using every bit of energy I have with my team … to get this done,” he said. “There’s a desire to see change in the region.”
The U.S. government also raised the pressure with additional sanctions Wednesday targeting more than a dozen ships and other entities it says were involved in illicit shipments of Iranian petroleum for the financial benefit of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and Hezbollah.
Meanwhile, the chief of Israel’s army said Wednesday that the military is preparing for a possible ground operation in Lebanon as Hezbollah hurled dozens of projectiles into Israel, including a missile aimed at Tel Aviv that was the militant group’s deepest strike yet.
Blinken has been urging both Israel and Hezbollah to step back from their intensifying conflict, saying that all-out war would be disastrous for the region and that escalation was not the way to get people back to their homes on the Israel-Lebanon border.
“It would be through a diplomatic agreement that has forces pulled back from the border, create a secure environment, people return home,” Blinken told NBC News. “That’s what we’re driving toward because while there’s a very legitimate issue here, we don’t think that war is the solution.”
France has called a special U.N. Security Council meeting on Lebanon for later Wednesday at which the U.S. proposal may be discussed.
“What we’re focused on now, including with many partners here in New York at the U.N. General Assembly, the Arab world, Europeans and others, is a plan to de-escalate,” Blinken said.
“If there were to be a full-scale war — which we don’t have and which we’re working to avoid – that’s actually not going to solve the problem,” Blinken said.
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Superville reported from Washington. AP White House correspondent Zeke Miller in Washington and Josef Federman in Jerusalem contributed.
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