Israeli army chief says military preparing for Lebanon ground incursion.
WASHINGTON/BEIRUT/TEL AVIV - US President Joe Biden said “all-out war” is possible in the Middle East but that the window is still open to pull the region back from the brink of escalating conflict. “An all out war is possible,” Biden said on the ABC daytime talk show “The View.”
“But I think there’s also the opportunity — we’re still in play to have a settlement that could fundamentally change the whole region,” he continued. Biden was speaking as tensions were ratcheting up between Israel and Hezbollah and as American officials described ceasefire and hostage talks in Gaza as stalled.
The president reiterated the importance of finding a two-state solution and said a pathway was still open to securing such an outcome.
“There’s a way to do it, and they have a possibility – I don’t want to exaggerate it, but a possibility — if we can deal with a ceasefire in Lebanon, that it can move into dealing with the West Bank, but we also have Gaza to deal with,” he said.
The Israeli military is preparing for a possible ground incursion into Lebanon, its top general said on Wednesday. “You hear the jets overhead; we have been striking all day,” Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, Chief of the General Staff, told troops while visiting the northern border, according to a military press release. “This is both to prepare the ground for your possible entry and to continue degrading Hezbollah.” It is the second time Wednesday that a top Israeli general has said that a ground operation may be imminent. Israel’s top general in the north, Maj. Gen. Ori Gordin, said that the military “must be fully prepared for maneuvers.” It also comes just hours after the Israel Defense Forces said it was calling up two reserve brigades because of the conflict with Hezbollah.
Halevi told troops that in order to return 60,000 Israelis to their homes in the north, “we are preparing the process of a maneuver.” It “means your military boots, your maneuvering boots, will enter enemy territory, enter villages that Hezbollah has prepared as large military outposts, with underground infrastructure, staging points, and launchpads into our territory and carry out attacks on Israeli civilians,” he said. At least 51 people were killed in Israeli strikes in Lebanon on Wednesday, the Lebanese minister of health said. “As of now, there are 51 martyrs and 223 injured in today’s various strikes on Al-Muaisira, Jounieh, Baalbek-Hermel, and southern areas,” Dr. Firass Abyad told reporters. “Large waves” of people have been displaced across Lebanon, he said, including hospital patients who had been undergoing dialysis in southern Lebanon and the Beqaa valley. The government would provide medicine and infant formula to those who need it, the minister added. Also, the United States said Wednesday that a missile launched by Hezbollah in Lebanon at Tel Aviv in Israel was “deeply concerning,” but that a diplomatic route remains to avoid “all-out war.”