By The Jerusalem Post (World News) | Created at 2024-10-21 11:30:14 | Updated at 2024-10-21 14:52:47
3 hours ago
US special envoy Amos Hochstein stressed the importance of not tying the IDF-Hezbollah war to other conflicts in the region, alluding to the larger Israeli-Iranian one, or the Israel-Hamas war.
By TOVAH LAZAROFF OCTOBER 21, 2024 14:14
US special envoy Amos Hochstein gestures as he attends a press conference after meeting with Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri in Beirut, Lebanon August 14, 2024.
(photo credit: REUTERS/MOHAMED AZAKIR)
US special envoy Amos Hochstein is in the region to hold talks with Israel and Lebanese officials about an IDF-Hezbollah ceasefire based on the United Security Council resolution 1701 that set the ceasefire terms that ended the Second Lebanon war in 2006.
“We're going to have a substantive conversation with the Government of Lebanon, with the Government of Israel, about how best to bring about a cessation of hostilities to end this conflict,” Hochstein said.
He spoke more than a year into the IDF-Hezbollah war, which has escalated in the last month to include an IDF ground invasion into southern Lebanon and intensive Israeli aerial strikes against Hezbollah targets in Beirut.
“This is my sixth, or maybe seventh visit to Lebanon in the past year,” Hochstein said.
“While we spent 11 months containing the conflict. We were not able to resolve it. In each of my visits, I cautioned that the situation was urgent and the status quo was not sustainable. We were either going to reach a solution or things are going to escalate out of control,” Hochstein said.
Conflict needs immediate resolution, Hochstein says
He recalled that on past visits he had cautioned about the urgency of resolving the situation, noting that options to resolve the conflict had been rejected.
Now, he said, “the situation has escalated out of control as we feared that it could.”
He stressed the importance of not tying the IDF-Hezbollah war to other conflicts in the region, alluding to the larger Israeli-Iranian one, or the Israeli-Hamas war in Gaza.
Hezbollah had initially said it would only consider a ceasefire with Israel once one was reached in Gaza. Israel had initially sought to separate those two fronts but has recently considered whether an overall deal with Iran and Hezbollah that included Gaza could be a way to pressure Hamas into releasing the 101 hostages it holds in the enclave.
“I want to be very, very clear,” Hochstein said, stressing that “tying Lebanon's future to other conflicts in the region was not and is not in the interest of the Lebanese people.”
