Amos Hochstein, a top White House official and de facto envoy for President Biden, is traveling to Paris on July 3, 2024, to discuss ways to defuse the escalating conflict between Israel and Hezbollah militants in Lebanon. The trip comes after Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken stated that Israel had lost sovereignty near its border with Lebanon due to attacks by Hezbollah militants.
Hochstein will meet with French officials, including Jean-Yves Le Drian, President Emmanuel Macron's special envoy to Lebanon, and Anne-Claire Legendre, a senior adviser to Mr. Macron. The White House had no immediate comment about Hochstein's visit.
U.S. officials have been working for months to prevent a war between Israel and Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran and has launched rocket attacks on northern Israel in solidarity with Hamas, the armed group that governed Gaza and started the current war on October 7, 2024.
Hezbollah militants have carried out hundreds of attacks against northern Israel's upper and western Galilee amid the war. One of their units, Aziz, is responsible for Lebanon's southwestern region from the coast to the Bint Jbeil area. A senior commander in this unit, Muhammad Nimah Nasser, was killed by Israeli forces in a strike on Tyre on July 3.
Israel last week approved the largest seizure of land in the occupied West Bank in three decades. Building or expanding Israeli settlements in seized areas is a key aim of far-right members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's governing coalition. About 1.9 million Palestinians have been displaced in Gaza since the war began, representing about 80% of the prewar population.
Resolving the conflict will require an agreement to pull back forces from the border.
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