U.S. and allies call for ‘immediate’ 21-day cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah

NEW YORK — The U.S., France and other allies jointly called Wednesday for an “immediate” 21-day cease-fire to allow for negotiations in the escalating conflict between Israel and Hezbollah that has killed more than 600 people in Lebanon in recent days.

The joint statement, negotiated on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, says the recent fighting is “intolerable and presents an unacceptable risk of a broader regional escalation.”

“We call for an immediate 21-day cease-fire across the Lebanon-Israel border to provide space for diplomacy,” the statement said. “We call on all parties, including the governments of Israel and Lebanon, to endorse the temporary cease-fire immediately.”

There was no immediate reaction from the Israeli or Lebanese governments — or Hezbollah — but senior U.S. officials said all parties were aware of the call for a cease-fire and would be speaking for themselves in the coming hours.

The officials said Hezbollah would not be a signatory to the cease-fire, but they believe the government of Lebanon would coordinate its acceptance with the group. Officials said they expected Israel to “welcome” the proposal in the coming hours and perhaps formally accept it when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks at the General Assembly on Friday.

While the cease-fire call applies only to the Israel-Lebanon border, senior U.S. officials said they were looking to use a three-week pause in fighting there to restart stalled negotiations for a cease-fire and hostage release deal between Israel and Hamas.

The nations calling for a cease-fire include the United States, Australia, Canada, the European Union, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Qatar.

Work on the proposal came together quickly this week with President Joe Biden’s national security team, led by Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan, working with allies to get the deal together, according to U.S. officials.

The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private deliberations, said the deal crystallized by late Wednesday afternoon during a conversation on the sidelines of the General Assembly between Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot told the U.N. Security Council during a special meeting that “we are counting on both parties to accept it without delay.”

Barrot said France, a former colonial power to Lebanon, and the U.S. had consulted with the sides on “final parameters for a diplomatic way out of this crisis,” adding that “war is not unavoidable.”

U.S. deputy ambassador to the U.N. Robert Wood encouraged the council to support the diplomatic efforts but didn’t offer specifics about the plan.

“We are working with other countries on a proposal that we hope will lead to calm and enable discussions to a diplomatic solution,” he said.

Earlier Wednesday, Blinken said the U.S. administration was “intensely engaged with a number of partners to deescalate tensions in Lebanon and to work to get a cease-fire agreement that would have so many benefits for all concerned.”

Blinken and other advisers to Biden have spent the past three days at and on the sidelines of the annual U.N. General Assembly meeting of world leaders in New York lobbying other countries to support the plan, according to U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic conversations.

Blinken first raised the proposal with the French foreign minister on Monday and then broadened his outreach that evening at a dinner with the foreign ministers of all the Group of Seven industrialized democracies.

During a meeting Wednesday morning with Gulf Cooperation Council foreign ministers, Blinken approached Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani and Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan to seek their approval and got it. Blinken and senior White House adviser Amos Hochstein then met with Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati and won his approval.

Blinken expects to meet Netanyahu’s top strategic adviser in New York on Thursday ahead of the prime minister’s arrival.

The Americans hope such a cease-fire could lead to longer-term stability along the border between Israel and Lebanon. Months of Israeli and Hezbollah exchanges of fire across the border drove tens of thousands of people from their homes on both sides of the border, and escalated attacks this week have rekindled fears of a broader war in the Middle East.

Sullivan, Hochstein and senior adviser Brett McGurk were also in touch with Israeli officials about the proposal, one of the U.S. officials said. McGurk and Hochstein have been the White House’s chief interlocutors with Israel and Lebanon since the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas, another Iranian-backed militant group.

An Israeli official said Netanyahu has given the green light to pursue a possible deal, but only if it includes the return of Israeli civilians to their homes. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they were discussing behind-the-scenes diplomacy.

Mikati, the Lebanese prime minister, then publicly threw his support behind the French-U.S. plan that “enjoys international support and which would put an end to this dirty war.”

He called on the Security Council “to guarantee the withdrawal of Israel from all the occupied Lebanese territories and the violations that are repeated on a daily basis.”

Israel’s U.N. Ambassador, Danny Danon, told journalists at the United Nations that Israel would like to see a cease-fire and the return of people to their homes near the border: “It will happen, either after a war or before a war. We hope it will be before.”

Addressing the Security Council later Wednesday night, he made no mention of negotiations on a temporary cease-fire but said Israel “does not seek a full-scale war.”

Both Danon and Mikati reffirmed their governments’ commitment to a Security Council resolution that ended the 2006 Israeli-Hezbollah war in Lebanon. Never fully implemented, it called for a cessation of hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah, the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon to be replaced by Lebanese forces and U.N. peacekeepers, and the disarmament of all armed groups including Hezbollah.

Danon demanded that the resolution be enforced in full without delay: “I make this declaration here today, to remove any doubt: Never again. Never again will the Jewish people hide from the monsters whose purpose in life is to murder Jews.”

Earlier Wednesday, Biden warned in an appearance on ABC’s “The View” that “an all-out war is possible” but said he thinks the opportunity also exists “to have a settlement that can fundamentally change the whole region.”

Biden suggested that getting Israel and Hezbollah to agree to a cease-fire could help achieve a cessation of hostilities between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. That war is approaching the one-year mark after Hamas raids in southern Israel on Oct. 7 killed about 1,200 people. Israel responded with an offensive that has since killed more than 41,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health officials, who do not provide a breakdown of civilians and fighters in their count.

“It’s possible and I’m using every bit of energy I have with my team … to get this done,” Biden said. “There’s a desire to see change in the region.”

The U.S. and other international mediators have tried and failed for months to broker a cease-fire in Gaza that also would release hostages held by Hamas.

The U.S. government also raised the pressure with additional sanctions Wednesday targeting more than a dozen ships and other entities it says were involved in illicit shipments of Iranian petroleum for the financial benefit of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and Hezbollah.

Meanwhile, the chief of Israel’s army said Wednesday that the military is preparing for a possible ground operation in Lebanon as Hezbollah hurled dozens of projectiles into Israel, including a missile aimed at Tel Aviv that was the militant group’s deepest strike yet.

___

AP reporters Zeke Miller and Darlene Superville in Washington, Josef Federman in Jerusalem, Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations and Bassem Mroue in Beirut contributed.