White House: Israel Says It Was Defending Itself, We Want ‘Both Sides to Step Back’, Good That Attacks Were ‘Lighter’

On Tuesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “All In,” White House National Security Communications Adviser John Kirby acknowledged that Israel says it acted over the last few days to pre-empt attacks from Hezbollah, but “The attacks today were lighter than they were yesterday. That’s a welcome sign,” “and we continue to urge both sides to step back here.”

Kirby said, “We want to de-escalate the tensions. We don’t want to see an all-out war. And I would argue that almost everything we’ve been doing since the 7th of October is to try to prevent that exact outcome. Now, the way the Israelis have talked about what they’ve done over the last couple of days in particular was to pre-empt what they believed and they had intelligence that convinced them were going to be imminent attacks by Hezbollah, rocket, missile attacks. The attacks today were lighter than they were yesterday. That’s a welcome sign, but we’re obviously watching this really, really closely. It’s a dangerous moment we’re in right now, and we continue to urge both sides to step back here. We believe, the president still believes, that there is a diplomatic solution to be had here.”

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