By AAMER MADHANI, MATTHEW LEE and JENNIFER PELTZ
NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S., France and other allies jointly called Wednesday for an immediate 21-day cease-fire to allow for negotiations in the escalating conflict between Israel and Hezbollah that has killed more than 600 people in Lebanon in recent days.
The joint statement, negotiated on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York, says the recent fighting is “intolerable and presents an unacceptable risk of a broader regional escalation.”
“We call for an immediate 21-day cease-fire across the Lebanon-Israel border to provide space for diplomacy,” the statement said. “We call on all parties, including the governments of Israel and Lebanon, to endorse the temporary cease-fire immediately.”
There was no immediate reaction from the Israeli or Lebanese governments — or Hezbollah — but senior U.S. officials said all parties were aware of the call for a cease-fire. Earlier, representatives for Israel and Lebanon reiterated their support for a U.N. resolution that ended the 2006 war between Israel and the Iranian-backed militant group.
The U.S. hopes the new deal could lead to longer-term stability along the border between Israel and Lebanon. Months of Israeli and Hezbollah exchanges of fire have driven tens of thousands of people from their homes, and escalated attacks over the past week have rekindled fears of a broader war in the Middle East.
The U.S. officials said Hezbollah would not be a signatory to the cease-fire but believed the Lebanese government would coordinate its acceptance with the group. They said they expected Israel to “welcome” the proposal and perhaps formally accept it when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks at the General Assembly on Friday.
While the deal applies only to the Israel-Lebanon border, the U.S. officials said they were looking to use a three-week pause in fighting to restart stalled negotiations for a cease-fire and hostage release deal between Israel and Hamas, another Iranian-backed militant group, after nearly a year of war in Gaza.
The nations calling for a halt to the Israel-Hezbollah conflict are the United States, Australia, Canada, the European Union, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Qatar.
Work on the proposal came together quickly this week with President Joe Biden’s national security team, led by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan, meeting with world leaders in New York and lobbying other countries to support the plan, according to U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic conversations.
Blinken first raised the proposal with the French foreign minister Monday and then broadened his outreach that evening at a dinner with the foreign ministers of all the Group of Seven industrialized democracies.
During a meeting Wednesday morning with Gulf Cooperation Council foreign ministers, Blinken approached Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani and Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan to ask their approval and got it. Blinken and senior White House adviser Amos Hochstein then met with Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati, who signed off on the deal.
Sullivan, Hochstein and senior adviser Brett McGurk were also in touch with Israeli officials about the proposal, one of the U.S. officials said. McGurk and Hochstein have been the White House’s chief interlocutors with Israel and Lebanon since the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas launched the war in Gaza.
The officials said the deal crystallized by late Wednesday afternoon during a conversation on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly between Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron.
Blinken expects to meet Netanyahu’s top strategic adviser in New York on Thursday ahead of the prime minister’s arrival.
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.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot told the U.N. Security Council during a special meeting that “we are counting on both parties to accept it without delay” and added that “war is not unavoidable.”
At the meeting, Mikati, the Lebanese prime minister, publicly threw his support behind the French-U.S. plan that “enjoys international support and which would put an end to this dirty war.”
He called on the Security Council “to guarantee the withdrawal of Israel from all the occupied Lebanese territories and the violations that are repeated on a daily basis.”
Israel’s U.N. Ambassador, Danny Danon, told journalists that Israel would like to see a cease-fire and the return of people to their homes near the border: “It will happen, either after a war or before a war. We hope it will be before.”
Addressing the Security Council later, he made no mention of a temporary cease-fire but said Israel “does not seek a full-scale war.”
Both Danon and Mikati reaffirmed their governments’ commitment to a Security Council resolution that ended the 2006 Israeli-Hezbollah war. Never fully implemented, it called for a cessation of hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah, the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon to be replaced by Lebanese forces and U.N. peacekeepers, and the disarmament of all armed groups including Hezbollah.
Earlier Wednesday, Biden warned in an appearance on ABC’s “The View” that “an all-out war is possible” but said he 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 in Gaza.
That war is approaching the one-year mark after Hamas attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing about 1,200 people and taking hostages. Israel responded with an offensive that has since killed more than 41,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health officials, who do not provide a breakdown of civilians and fighters in their count.
“It’s possible and I’m using every bit of energy I have with my team … to get this done,” Biden said. “There’s a desire to see change in the region.”
The U.S. government also raised the pressure with additional sanctions 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.
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AP reporters Zeke Miller and Darlene Superville in Washington, Josef Federman in Jerusalem, Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations and Bassem Mroue in Beirut contributed.
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