Gallant to Austin – Time running out on diplomatic solution with Hezbollah

The defense minister clearly hinted that Israel is leaning toward an all-out war with the Lebanese terror group.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told his American counterpart Sunday evening that time is fast running out for a diplomatic solution to the security crisis on the northern border.

Speaking by phone to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Gallant said, “The possibility of a settlement in the north is passing. Hezbollah continues to tie itself to Hamas — the direction is clear.”

The Lebanese Shiite terror organization has fired almost 8,000 rockets, missiles and suicide drones at Israel’s north in the 11 months since it began supporting the Hamas war effort the day after the Gazan terrorists’ invasion and murder of 1,200 people on October 7, 2023.

The attacks have killed 24 IDF soldiers and 26 civilians, including 12 children in one attack, and caused billions of shekels of damages to residents’ homes and businesses, as well as scorching hundreds of dunam of open land.

The IDF has so far retaliated with airstrikes and artillery fire on Hezbollah sites, mostly in southern Lebanon but also occasionally hitting the terrorists’ strongholds further north, in the Bekaa region.

These strikes have killed some 500 terrorists, many of them senior commanders. In August, a pinpoint missile strike assassinated Hezbollah’s chief of staff, Fuad Shukr, in a Beirut apartment building.

But some 60-80,000 Israelis were evacuated from their communities near the border 11 months ago for their own safety and, Gallant told Austin, they have to go home.

However, Hezbollah must first be moved far enough away from the border so as not to constitute a constant threat to their lives, as the residents themselves have maintained for months.

Israel is committed to doing this, Gallant said.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made the same point ahead of his meeting Monday with U.S. mediator Amos Hochstein.

“The current situation will not continue,” he said before Sunday’s Cabinet meeting. “This requires a change in the balance of forces on our northern border. We will do whatever is necessary to return our residents securely to their homes. I am committed to this. The Government is committed to this and we will not suffice with less than this.”

Hochstein has been trying to persuade the Lebanese to rein in Hezbollah, which is one of the parties in the country’s governing coalition.

As for what Israel should give in return for quiet, according to Kan News he is expected to suggest a small border adjustment in Lebanon’s favor, rather than simply an Israeli commitment not to invade and destroy Hezbollah.

There is a binding UN Security Council Resolution that ended the 2006 Second Lebanon War requiring Hezbollah to be disarmed and pushed back beyond the Litani River in Lebanon, which for the most part is several miles away from the Blue Line that marks the border.

In the 18 years since, not only has it never been enforced, the Iranian proxy has been allowed by UNIFIL, the UN’s official “peacekeeping force” on the Lebanese side, to turn southern Lebanon into an armed garrison, including a tunnel network that Israeli intelligence believes is even more extensive and dangerous than that of Hamas in Gaza.

For his part, Austin has repeatedly said that diplomacy is the best way to prevent an all-out war with Hezbollah.

HezbollahIsrael's northern borderLebanonLloyd AustinYoav Gallant