By Humeyra Pamuk, Maya Gebeily and John Irish
DOHA/BEIRUT/PARIS (Reuters) -The United States does not want a protracted Israeli campaign in Lebanon, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Thursday, a month into Israel’s military onslaught against the heavily armed Iranian-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah.
Blinken also said he hoped Iran was getting a clear message that any further attacks on Israel fundamentally risked its own interests, with the region awaiting the retaliation Israel has vowed for an Iranian missile barrage on Oct. 1.
And he anticipated a meeting of negotiators in the coming days to try to restart negotiations on a Gaza ceasefire.
U.S. and Israeli negotiators will gather in Doha to prepare the way for renewed talks on the deal, which would also entail the release of hostages in Gaza, Qatar and Washington’s top diplomats said.
Blinken, speaking after talks with Qatar’s prime minister, said it had not yet been determined whether Hamas was prepared to engage in new negotiations, but urged the group to do so.
Blinken has been on his first trip to the region since Israel killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, a mastermind of the group’s Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel that sparked conflict across the Middle East. Washington has expressed hope his death can provide an impetus for an end to the fighting.
Israel launched its Lebanon offensive with the declared aim of securing the return home of tens of thousands of people evacuated from homes in northern Israel during a year of cross-border hostilities with Hezbollah.
Israel has used airstrikes to pound southern Lebanon, Beirut’s southern suburbs and the Bekaa Valley, and sent ground forces into areas near the border. Lebanese authorities say the campaign has killed more than 2,500 people and displaced more than 1 million people, spawning a humanitarian crisis.
“As Israel conducts operations to remove the threat to Israel and its people along the border with Lebanon, we have been very clear that this cannot lead, should not lead, to a protracted campaign,” Blinken said, speaking in Doha.
“Israel must take the necessary steps to avoid civilian casualties and not endanger UN peacekeepers or Lebanese armed forces,” he added.
Earlier on Thursday, an Israeli strike killed three Lebanese soldiers as they were trying to evacuate wounded people from the border village of Yater, the Lebanese army said. There was no immediate comment on the strike from the Israeli military, which has previously said it is not operating against the Lebanese army.
Armed and trained by the United States, the Lebanese army is seen as vital to any diplomatic resolution of the war. Its deployment into the south is a key part of U.N. Security Council resolution 1701 which ended a 2006 Hezbollah-Israel war.
That resolution, seen by major powers as the basis for a new ceasefire, demands the south be free of any weapons other than those of the Lebanese state. The Lebanese army currently has little sway in the border region, a stronghold of Hezbollah.
‘STORM’ OF DESTRUCTION
Blinken said the United States was “working intensely” on a diplomatic resolution which would allow civilians on both sides on the border to return to their homes.
A conference convened by France raised $200 million for the Lebanese military and $800 million in humanitarian aid.
“There needs to be a ceasefire in Lebanon. More damage, more victims, more strikes will not enable the end of terrorism or ensure security for everyone,” French President Emmanuel Macron said. He said the conference would support the recruitment of 6,000 Lebanese troops and provide the army with key supplies.
Lebanon’s caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati said a ceasefire was in Israel’s hands. “The storm we are currently witnessing … carries the seeds of total destruction, not only for our country, but for all human values,” he said.
Israeli attacks on Thursday included a strike on a vehicle on a highway from Beirut to the Bekaa Valley – one of Lebanon’s busiest roads. A security source said one person was killed.
The Israeli military said around 120 projectiles fired by Hezbollah had crossed into Israel.
In northern Israel, air raid sirens sounded in Nahariya and explosions could be heard as air defences fired to intercept rockets. Footage showed damage to a car, part of a projectile on the roadside, and a hole in the road where it struck.
The Alma Research and Education Center, an Israeli think tank that specializes in the northern arena with Hezbollah, said 29 civilians have been killed in Israel so far as a result of Hezbollah attacks over the last year.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) says 52 soldiers have been killed in Israel and southern Lebanon. At least 25 have been killed since the start of the ground operation three weeks ago.
GAZA STRIKE KILLS 16
Hezbollah opened fire on Oct. 8, 2023, in solidarity with its Palestinian allies in Gaza. Israel’s Gaza offensive has killed more than 42,000 people and laid waste to the territory, according to Gaza health authorities. The Hamas-led, Oct. 7 attack which sparked it killed 1,200 people and resulted in another 250 being abducted, according to Israeli tallies.
At least 16 Palestinians were killed, including children, in an Israeli strike on a school in Gaza’s Nuseirat camp, Nuseirat’s Al-Awda hospital said. It said 32 people were wounded.
The Israeli military said it had hit a Hamas command and control centre housed in a compound formerly used as a school in the area of Nuseirat.
Since killing Sinwar last week, Israel has pressed on with intensive operations in northern Gaza, in what Palestinians and U.N. agencies fear could be an attempt to seal off the north from the rest of the enclave.
(Additional reporting by Ahmad Al Kerdi, Emilie Madi and Laila Bassam in Lebanon; Clauda Tanios and Tala Ramadan in Dubai, Kanishka Singh in Washington; Writing by Tom Perry and Michael Perry; editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan, Lincoln Feast, Philippa Fletcher)
