Five days of frantic US diplomacy on Lebanon has yielded little

NEW YORK (AP) — President Joe Biden's administration headed into the annual U.N. General Assembly gathering of world leaders this week with high hopes that he could cement his legacy as an international statesman during escalating conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine.

Yet five days of frantic diplomacy focused mainly on preventing the Israel-Hezbollah crisis from exploding into a full-scale war has yielded little, if any, results — and prospects for peace have further dimmed.

Despite a proposal from the U.S., France and other allies for a temporary cease-fire along the border with Lebanon, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a defiant speech Friday to the General Assembly, vowing to keep up operations against Hezbollah until tens of thousands of Israeli citizens displaced by rocket attacks can return home.

As Netanyahu spoke, Israel launched a massive strike on Hezbollah’s main headquarters in Beirut that targeted the group's leader Hassan Nasrallah. Netanyahu then cut short his already-truncated visit to New York and headed home without meeting U.S. officials.

“Israel has the right to defend itself against terrorism. The way it does so matters,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters Friday, declining to outright criticize Israel for its latest strike. The Pentagon and the White House National Security Council said the U.S. did not get advance warning.

“We believe the way forward is through diplomacy not conflict. The path to diplomacy may seem difficult, as we see in this moment, but it is there,” Blinken said.

Netanyahu's speech and his abbreviated trip — which lacked any meetings with leaders from Israel’s largest and most important backer, the United States — underscored the limits of American influence. Many believe U.S. sway in the region has been waning since Israel's war with Hamas, another Iranian-backed militant group, began nearly a year ago.

Critics of the administration’s handling of the growing Middle East conflict say Biden and his team now find themselves contending with an uncomfortable dynamic they created themselves: A split-screen in which top administration officials are pleading for a cease-fire as Israel continues to decisively go after top Hezbollah commanders that it blames for driving tens of thousands of Israelis from their homes near the border with Lebanon.

“On the same day the U.S. was begging Hezbollah for a cease-fire, Israel took out Hezbollah’s command center,” said Richard Goldberg, a senior adviser at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and a former National Security Council staffer on the Iran desk during the Trump administration. “The contrast brings the current state of American weakness into sharp relief.”

This week began with Biden’s top national security aides working to build support for a 21-day Israel-Hezbollah cease-fire that they hoped might also breathe new life into stalled efforts to secure a truce in Gaza.

Blinken met with European and Gulf Arab foreign ministers, along with Netanyahu's top strategic adviser, Ron Dermer. Brett McGurk and Amos Hochstein, the White House’s chief interlocutors with Israel and Lebanon since the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel by Hamas launched the war in Gaza, held similar talks in New York to win support for the plan.

After three days of intense talks — punctuated by a brief spat between the United States and France over the timing — the proposal was presented late Wednesday.

The Americans were particularly perturbed by France calling an emergency U.N. Security Council session on Lebanon for Wednesday evening — at which the French foreign minister previewed the as-yet unfinished proposal — while at the same time Biden was hosting a reception for world leaders at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. That effectively forced the U.S. to unveil it before many officials believed it was ready.

Nearly four hours after that Security Council meeting began, the White House released the plan. U.S. officials then offered upbeat assessments of its prospects over the objections of some in the Biden administration who had urged caution, according to several people familiar with the negotiations who spoke on condition of anonymity to detail private discussions.

After consulting with senior Israeli officials, Blinken and other diplomats had expected Israel to at least welcome, if not endorse, the plan. Instead, Netanyahu appeared to reject it when he arrived in New York on Thursday. He later clarified that Israel supports the goals of the cease-fire.

Biden administration officials have been pressing for approval of the proposal since it was announced Wednesday night, but their hopes have waned since. No U.S. officials had contact with Netanyahu when he was in New York.

In his U.N. speech Friday, the Israeli leader castigated much of the world for trying to push his country into accepting an untenable situation along its northern border.

“We’ll continue degrading Hezbollah until all our objectives are met,” he told the General Assembly, just before reports emerged that Israeli had struck Hezbollah’s headquarters. “I’ve come here today to say: Enough is enough.”

Having returned to Washington on Wednesday night, Biden ordered the Pentagon on Friday “to assess and adjust as necessary U.S. force posture in the region to enhance deterrence, ensure force protection, and support the full range of U.S. objectives," the White House said.

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Madhani reported from Rehoboth Beach, Del.