U.S. Special Envoy Amos Hochstein met in Beirut, Lebanon, on Tuesday with Nabih Berri, the speaker of Parliament and the leader of the Hezbollah-aligned Amal Shiite movement, in an effort to encourage de-escalation with Israel.
Hezbollah, a Shiite terror organization funded and armed by Iran, began firing at Israel in October in solidarity with the Palestinian terror group Hamas, as the latter launched a massive terror attack on southern Israel on October 7.
Israel was forced to evacuate roughly 60,000 civilians from its northern border towns. Though the Iron Dome system has helped, Hezbollah’s anti-tank missiles fly too low, and rockets it fires into open areas have caused major fires.
Israel has responded carefully — first by responding to the sources of fire, then by targeting Hezbollah commanders. The two sides are now close to all-out war, with Israel repeatedly warning that the situation is not “sustainable.”
The Times of Israel reported:
US envoy Amos Hochstein calls for the “urgent” de-escalation in cross-border exchanges of fire between Hezbollah and Israel.
…
Hochstein says Washington is seeking to avoid “a greater war” in the region, describing the situation along the border as “serious,” and says that is why US President Joe Biden dispatched him to Lebanon. Hochstein is in Lebanon for one day of meetings following his brief trip to Israel yesterday.
Berri, with whom Hochstein met, is a key Hezbollah ally, as the Agence France-Presse noted in a 2018 report:
Berri … heads the Amal Movement and is a close ally of the powerful Shiite terror group Hezbollah.
Together, the two parties hold all but one of the 26 Shiite-allocated seats in Lebanon’s parliament.
In Israel, Hochstein met with all of the major officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Hochstein brokered a gas deal in 2022 between Israel and Lebanon in which Israel gave up offshore gas fields in the hope of securing calm. That deal now looks like a disaster, as Hezbollah has not been afraid to risk proving war with Israel.
Hezbollah’s presence on the Israeli border is a violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1707 (2006), which neither the United Nations Interim Force In Lebanon (UNIFIL) nor Lebanon has bothered to enforce.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, “The Zionist Conspiracy (and how to join it),” now available on Audible. He is also the author of the e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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