NEW YORK (AP) — The United States, France and other allies jointly called Wednesday for an immediate 21-day cease-fire to allow for negotiations in the region. Escalation of conflict between Israel and Hezbollah which has left more than 600 dead in Lebanon in recent days.
The joint statement, negotiated on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, said: recent fighting is “intolerable and poses an unacceptable risk of broader regional escalation.”
“We call for an immediate 21-day ceasefire on the border between Lebanon and Israel to allow room for diplomacy,” the statement said. “We call on all parties, including the Israeli and Lebanese governments, to immediately endorse the temporary ceasefire.”
The Israeli and Lebanese governments, as well as Hezbollah, did not immediately respond, but senior U.S. officials said all sides were aware of the call for a ceasefire. Earlier, representatives from Israel and Lebanon reiterated their support for a U.N. resolution that ended the 2006 war between Israel and the Iran-backed militant group.
The United States hopes the new deal could lead to long-term stability along the border between Israel and Lebanon. Months of exchanges of fire between Israel and Hezbollah have forced tens of thousands of people from their homes and escalation of attacks over the past week have revived fears of a wider war in the Middle East.
U.S. officials said Hezbollah would not sign the cease-fire but believed the Lebanese government would coordinate its acceptance with the group. They added that they expected Israel to “welcome” the proposal and perhaps formally accept it when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses the General Assembly on Friday.
Although the deal applies only to the Israeli-Lebanese border, U.S. officials have said they are seeking to use a three-week pause in the fighting to revive it. Negotiations for a ceasefire and the release of hostages have stalled between Israel and Hamas, another Iranian-backed militant group, after nearly a year of war in Gaza.
Netanyahu’s office said the ceasefire proposed by the United States and France was just a proposal and that the prime minister, who is currently on a flight to the United States for the United Nations General Assembly, has not responded to the proposal.
The United States, France and other allies jointly called Wednesday for an immediate 21-day ceasefire to allow for negotiations in the Escalation of conflict between Israel and Hezbollah which has left more than 600 dead in Lebanon in recent days.
Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz, who is acting prime minister during Netanyahu’s trip abroad, said there would be no ceasefire in the north, vowing to continue fighting in the north “with full force until victory” and to return the tens of thousands of Israeli citizens evacuated from their homes in the north.
The Prime Minister’s Office added that the Israeli army continued to strike Hezbollah targets in Lebanon and the war in Gaza.
The allies calling for an end to the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah include the United States, Australia, Canada, the European Union, France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Japan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.
Work on the proposal moved 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 on Monday, then expanded on it that evening at a dinner with foreign ministers from all of the Group of Seven industrialized democracies.
At 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 for their approval and received it. Blinken and White House senior adviser Amos Hochstein then met with Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati, who signed the agreement.
Sullivan, Hochstein and senior adviser Brett McGurk have also been in contact with Israeli officials about the proposal, one of the U.S. officials said. McGurk and Hochstein have been the White House’s primary interlocutors with Israel and Lebanon since Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7 launched the war in Gaza.
Officials said the agreement crystallized Wednesday afternoon during a conversation on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly between Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron.
Blinken plans to meet Netanyahu’s top strategic adviser in New York on Thursday before the prime minister arrives.
An Israeli official said Netanyahu had given the green light to seeking a possible deal, but only if it included the return of Israeli civilians to their homes. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they were discussing diplomacy behind the scenes.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot told the UN Security Council at a special meeting that “we are counting on both sides to accept it without delay” and added that “war is not inevitable.”
During this meeting, Lebanese Prime Minister Mikati publicly expressed his support for the Franco-American plan which “enjoys international support and which would put an end to this dirty war.”
He called on the Security Council to “ensure Israel’s withdrawal from all occupied Lebanese territories and from the violations that are repeated daily.”
Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, told reporters that Israel would like to see a ceasefire and the return of residents to their homes near the border: “That will happen either after a war or before a war. We hope it will be before.”
Speaking later to the Security Council, he made no mention of a temporary ceasefire but said Israel “is not seeking a full-scale war.”
Both Danon and Mikati reaffirmed their governments’ commitment to a Security Council resolution that ended the war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006. Never fully implemented, that resolution called for a cessation of hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah, the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon to be replaced by Lebanese forces and UN peacekeepers, and the disarmament of all armed groups, including Hezbollah.
Earlier on Wednesday, Biden During an appearance on ABC’s “The View,” he warned that “total war is possible,” but said he believed it was also possible “to have a settlement that can fundamentally change the entire region.”
Biden suggested that getting Israel and Hezbollah to agree to a ceasefire could help bring about a cessation of hostilities between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.
The war has been going on for nearly a year, since 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 combatants in their count.
“It is possible and I am using all the energy I have with my team … to make it happen,” Biden said. “There is a desire to see change in the region.”
The U.S. government has also increased pressure by imposing additional sanctions targeting more than a dozen ships and other entities it accuses of being involved in illicit shipments of Iranian oil that financially benefit the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps 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 to this report.
