Speaker of Lebanese Parliament Says Conflict With Israel Will Not Escalate
The speaker of Lebanon’s parliament said in an interview on Monday that the country will not allow the violence along the southern border to escalate, contending it is Israel that is seeking to broaden what has so far been a limited cross-border conflict with Hizbullah into a full-fledged war.
Nabih Berri, leader of the country’s Amal movement and a close ally of the powerful, Iranian-backed Hizbullah militia, told Saudi-owned London-based Asharq Al-Awsat that Israeli strikes in Lebanon’s southern region have led to the “systematic destruction of dozens of towns.”
Israeli leaders argue that the daily flurry of rocket and drone attacks by Hizbullah—which de facto controls a large swatch of the conflict-affected area—into Israel since October 7 leaves little choice but to respond with force as tens of thousands of Israelis have had to evacuate the area.
The possibility of large-scale escalation between Hizbullah has prompted immense concern among international stakeholders, seeing nations such as France and the United States intimately involved with the negotiations to find a diplomatic solution.
Amos Hochstein, a US diplomat and close adviser to President Joe Biden who led negotiations on a maritime gas exploration deal between Lebanon and Israel in 2022, has been at the center of the recent talks with Berri, representing the White House’s efforts toward de-escalation and permanent implementation of United Nations Resolution 1701.
Passed unanimously by the UN Security Council, Resolution 1701 was intended to permanently resolve the 2006 Lebanon War, but while the resolution saw Israeli troops withdraw from southern Lebanon, Hizbullah and its allies never fully pulled out of the region designated to serve as a buffer zone patrolled by the UN’s force in Lebanon, UNIFIL.
The UN’s special coordinator for Lebanon, Joanna Wronecka, and Aroldo Lázaro Sáenz, head of UNIFIL, released a joint statement Monday urging talks to negotiate a permanent cease-fire “while there is still space for diplomacy.”
