White House: Military Escalation Not in Israel's Interests

Photo: John Kirby

Regional military escalation is not in Israel's “best interests,” White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Sunday, Sept. 22, amid rising tensions on the Israel-Lebanon border that are raising fears of a full-scale war.

“We do not believe that escalating this military conflict is in their best interests,”— Kirby told ABC's “This Week,” adding that the United States “is communicating this directly to our Israeli partners,” Agence France-Presse reported. 

Israel and the Iranian-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah have been engaged in a rapidly escalating exchange of attacks, including an intense overnight rocket barrage into northern Israel that the Israeli military says has sent hundreds of thousands of people scrambling for shelter.

“Tensions are significantly higher than they were just a few days ago,”— Kirby said.

But he added that “We still believe there is time and space for a diplomatic solution, and that is what we are working on.”

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The overnight rocket attack reached Kiryat Bialik on the outskirts of Haifa, setting one building on fire, riddling another with shrapnel and blowing up several cars.

The attacks follow an air strike on Beirut on Friday, September 20, that killed 45 people, including Hezbollah commanders, and devastating communications bombings across Lebanon earlier in the week that killed 39 people and wounded nearly 3,000.

Israel has said it will focus on Hezbollah after nearly a year of border fighting that began in October, after the Palestinian militant group Hamas launched an unprecedented attack on Israel that triggered the Gaza war.

“We have been working since the beginning of this conflict, since October 8, to prevent escalation, to prevent the conflict from spreading in Israel and in the region,” said Kirby.

Earlier in the day, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to bring northern Israelis displaced by nearly a year of fighting back home.

“An escalation of the war is certainly not in the interests of all the people Prime Minister Netanyahu wants to bring home,” Kirby said.

Prepared by: Sergei Daga