New York: Lebanon's foreign minister Abdallah Bou Habib voiced disappointment with US President Joe Biden's remarks about the escalating crisis between Israel and Lebanon on Tuesday, but said he still hoped Washington could intervene to help. This came as tensions between Israel and Hezbollah have peaked recently, with over 500 people killed in an Israeli airstrike on Monday.
"It was not strong. It is not promising and it would not solve this problem," the Lebanese minister said of Biden's speech at the United Nations earlier in the day. "I (am) still hoping. The United States is the only country that can really make a difference in the Middle East and with regard to Lebanon," Bou Habib said in New York during a virtual event.
The Israeli military carried out airstrikes against Hezbollah on Monday which Lebanese authorities said killed at least 569 people. The airstrike hit a building in the usually busy Ghobeiry neighbourhood in Beirut. One of the security sources shared a photo showing damage to the top floor of a five-storey building. Israel's military chief said earlier that attacks on Hezbollah would be accelerated.
Lebanon appeals to US for help
Bou Habib said half a million people are estimated to have been displaced in Lebanon due to the escalating conflict and the Lebanese Prime Minister hoped to meet with US officials over the next two days. After almost a year of war against Hamas in Gaza, Israel is shifting its focus to its northern frontier with Lebanon, where Hezbollah has been firing rockets into Israel in support of its ally Hamas.
US President Joe Biden addressed the 79th annual UN General Assembly high-level debate on Tuesday in what will be his last address as the President of the United States. He sought to calm tensions as the nearly year-long war between Israel and Palestinian militants Hamas in the besieged Gaza Strip now threatens to engulf Lebanon - where Israel targeted more than a thousand Hezbollah targets.
"Full-scale war is not in anyone's interest, even if the situation has escalated, a diplomatic solution is still possible," he told the 193-member UN General Assembly. To a round of applause, Biden called on Israel and Hamas to finalize the terms of a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal put forward by the US, Qatar and Egypt.
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Bou Habib said the United States "is the key ... to our salvation" as thousands of displaced people who fled from southern Lebanon were sheltering in schools and other buildings. The US and fellow mediators Qatar and Egypt have so far been unsuccessful in their efforts to negotiate a ceasefire in the nearly year-old war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas.
Israeli airstrike kills senior Hezbollah commander
Meanwhile, an Israeli airstrike on Beirut killed a senior Hezbollah commander on Tuesday as cross-border rocket attacks by both sides increased fears of a full-fledged war in the Middle East. Hezbollah early on Wednesday confirmed senior commander Ibrahim Qubaisi was killed by Israeli airstrikes on Tuesday on the Lebanese capital as Israel announced earlier.
Israel said Qubaisi headed the group's missile and rocket force. Israel's offensive since Monday morning has killed 569 people, including 50 children, and wounded 1,835 in Lebanon, Health Minister Firass Abiad told Al Jazeera Mubasher TV. The UN Security Council said it would meet on Wednesday to discuss the conflict.
"Lebanon is at the brink. The people of Lebanon – the people of Israel – and the people of the world - cannot afford Lebanon to become another Gaza," UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said. Israel has said it prefers a diplomatic solution that would move Hezbollah away from the Israel-Lebanon border. Hezbollah says that it also wants to avoid all-out conflict and that only an end to the war in Gaza will stop the fighting.
(with agency input)
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