Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel “shares the aims” of a US-led proposal for a ceasefire with Hizbollah, after officials in Washington reacted with frustration to his insistence that Israel would continue striking the Lebanese militant group with “full force”.
US President Joe Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday put forward a proposal for a 21-day ceasefire in a last-ditch attempt to prevent the hostilities between Israel and Hizbollah spiralling into a full-blown war.
US officials said the call for the ceasefire had been co-ordinated with Israel, while a diplomat said the US had expected Netanyahu to take a positive stance on the deal on his arrival on Thursday in New York, where he is due to address the UN General Assembly later on Friday.
But after a string of far-right members of his government had criticised the proposal, Netanyahu said, after arriving in New York, that Israel would continue striking Hizbollah and not “stop until we achieve all our objectives — first and foremost the return of the northern residents to their homes securely”.
In a statement released by his office on Friday morning, Netanyahu said Israel “shares the aims of the US-led initiative of enabling people along our northern border to return safely and securely to their homes”.
“Israel appreciates the US efforts in this regard because the US role is indispensable in advancing stability and security in the region,” the statement said, adding that discussions between US and Israeli officials would continue “in the coming days”.
Israel has said that one of its war aims is to ensure that Israel’s northern border region is safe enough to allow more than 60,000 people displaced by Hizbollah rocket fire to return to their homes.
US officials hope the truce would allow time to negotiate a more durable ceasefire between Israel and Hizbollah, and would also put pressure on Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas to accept the terms of a ceasefire-for-hostages deal in Gaza.
Two people familiar with the situation told the Financial Times on Thursday that the US was hoping that Netanyahu would use his address to the UN on Friday to announce that Israel’s war in Gaza was moving to a new phase, which might persuade Hizbollah — which has insisted it will not stop firing at Israel until the offensive against Hamas is over — to agree a temporary truce.
But amid a chorus of criticism of the plan from Israeli politicians, Israel continued to strike targets in Lebanon on Thursday, including carrying out a strike in the southern suburb of Dahiyeh that killed the commander of Hizbollah’s aerial operations, Mohammed Srour.
The strike came amid a massive escalation of Israel’s operations against the Iran-backed group, during which it has assassinated a string of commanders and launched an intense bombing campaign in Lebanon that has killed more than 600 people and newly displaced about 90,000 more.
Those displaced include thousands of Syrian refugees who sought shelter in Lebanon when war erupted in the neighbouring country in 2011. Many of the more than 1.5mn Syrians in Lebanon lack the right to work, and live in increasingly desperate conditions.
They have remained in Lebanon, fearing arrest, conscription or worse if they return to Syria — a country blighted by its own security breakdown and economic crisis.
Underscoring the desperation in Lebanon this week, more than 30,000 people have crossed into Syria from Lebanon since Monday, according to UNHCR, the UN’s refugee agency, which said that 80 per cent of them were Syrian and the rest Lebanese. Syrian media reports quoting Syrian officials said the total crossing the border was higher.
Gonzalo Vargas Llosa, the UNHCR representative in Syria, told a press conference in Geneva that “they are crossing from a country at war to one that has faced a crisis [and] conflict for 13 years . . . We will have to see over the next few days how many more do so.”
The hostilities continued on Friday morning, with Israeli strikes reported across Lebanon, killing and injuring scores of people. At least nine people from one family were killed by an Israeli air strike in the southern village of Shebaa, the state-run National News Agency reported.
Five Syrian soldiers were killed in an Israeli air strike targeting the border with Lebanon, Syrian state media said.
The Israeli military said Hizbollah launched 10 rockets in the direction of the northern port city of Haifa. One man was injured from shrapnel in the Sea of Galilee area, the Israeli ambulance service said.
During the night, the military said Israel’s Arrow air defence system had intercepted a surface-to-surface missile that was launched at the country from Yemen. Iraq’s Shia militias also said they had launched projectiles at Israel overnight, but the Israel Defense Forces said it was unaware of any reaching the country.
