Firas Maksad, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, wrote on X that there was still time for the key players to find a diplomatic solution. Mr. Hochstein’s trip, he said, would likely happen on Wednesday. “The window for diplomacy is closing but not closed,” he said.
Mr. Blinken, speaking on Monday at the Brookings Institution, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, said that he did not believe the key actors in the border conflict — Israel, Hezbollah and Iran — actually wanted to go to war, but that that’s where the “momentum” of the clashes could lead. U.S. officials fear that such a conflict could force the United States to come to Israel’s defense.
“No one actually wants a war,” Mr. Blinken said. He said that Iran, a determined foe of Israel, “wants to make sure that Hezbollah’s not destroyed and that it can hold onto Hezbollah as a card if it needs it, if it ever gets into a direct conflict with Israel.”
Some 60,000 Israelis have fled the area of the border clashes, many of whom have been living in Tel Aviv hotels for nine months. Referring to that situation, Mr. Blinken said that “Israel has effectively lost sovereignty in the northern quadrant of its country because people don’t feel safe to go to their homes.” The fighting has also displaced tens of thousands of people from southern Lebanon.
“Absent doing something about the insecurity, people won’t have the confidence to go back,” Mr. Blinken said. Resolving the issue, he added, will require an agreement to pull back forces from the border.
Mr. Blinken noted that Hezbollah has said that if a cease-fire were reached in Gaza, it would stop firing into Israel. That “underscores why a cease-fire in Gaza is so critical,” he said. But the latest round of negotiations between Israel and Hamas appear deadlocked.
Mr. Hochstein has met in recent weeks with Israeli officials and also with Lebanese officials, who can pass messages to and from Hezbollah, in an effort to negotiate a Hezbollah pullback to a position far enough from the border to satisfy Israel. In return, Israel might withdraw from some disputed border areas, and the U.S. could provide economic assistance for southern Lebanon, analysts say.
