President Biden and his top aides have been urging Israeli leaders against carrying out any major strike against Hezbollah, the powerful militia in Lebanon, that could draw it into the Israel-Hamas war, American and Israeli officials say.
The U.S. officials are concerned that some of the more hawkish members of Israel’s war cabinet have wanted to take on Hezbollah even as Israel begins a long conflict against Hamas after the Oct. 7 attacks. The Americans are conveying to the Israelis the difficulties of battling both Hamas in the south and a much more powerful Hezbollah force in the north.
U.S. officials believe Israel would struggle in a two-front war and that such a conflict could draw in both the United States and Iran, the militia’s main supporter.
The effort by top American officials to head off an Israeli offensive on Hezbollah, reported in detail here for the first time, reveals anxieties by the Biden administration over the war planning of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his aides, even as the two governments strive to present a strong united front in public.
American officials want to rein in Hezbollah too. In numerous meetings across the Middle East, American diplomats have been urging their Arab counterparts to help pass messages to the militia, including via their contacts in Iran, to try to prevent any Israel-Hezbollah war from erupting, whether through actions by the militia group or by the Israelis.
U.S. officials feared that Mr. Netanyahu might approve a pre-emptive strike on Hezbollah in the immediate aftermath of the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas, which killed more than 1,400 people. Although those fears have receded for now because Mr. Netanyahu cooled to the idea, anxieties still persist over two possibilities: an Israeli overreaction to Hezbollah rocket attacks, and harsh Israeli tactics in an expected ground offensive against Hamas in Gaza that would compel Hezbollah to enter the war…..
The U.S. government isn’t sure exactly how many U.S. citizens are being held captive. After Friday’s release of the Raanans, 10 Americans remain unaccounted for. Not all of them are presumed to be hostages, one person said. Israel has not yet identified the remains of all the people killed in the initial Hamas assault.
Chief among the challenges ahead: the expectation that once Israel invades, talks will collapse and consideration of the hostages will fall by the wayside.
When asked by reporters on Friday whether Israel should delay its ground invasion of Gaza to allow time for more hostages to be freed, President Biden replied “yes,” an apparent break with the administration’s previous assertions that it would not dictate the timeline on which an attack should commence. The White House later said the president misheard the question and instead was affirming that he wanted more hostages released.
“The urgent work to free every single American, to free all other hostages continues, as does our work to secure the safe passage out of Gaza for the Americans who are trapped there,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters earlierFriday.
Biden has maintained that securing the hostages’ release is his top priority. About a week after Hamas’s cross-border massacre, Biden spoke with the families of Americans presumed to be held hostage. He did the same on Wednesday, during his seven hours on the ground in Tel Aviv, this time consoling family members of Israeli hostages as well as victims of the attack…..