US special envoy Amos Hochstein said on Monday that a diplomatic solution was key to ending nearly five months of intensifying hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel, AFP reported.
Israel and Hezbollah have been exchanging near-daily fire since October 7, soon after the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza broke out.
"A diplomatic solution is the only way to end the current hostilities" and achieve "a lasting fair security arrangement between Lebanon and Israel", Hochstein told reporters in Beirut, adding that "a temporary ceasefire is not enough".
"A limited war is not containable," he said, speaking after a meeting with parliamentary speaker Nabih Berri.
Security along the Blue Line, demarcated by the United Nations in 2000 after Israeli troops pulled out of southern Lebanon, "has to change in order to guarantee everyone's security", he added.
Hochstein held talks with other senior officials including Prime Minister Najib Mikati and army chief Joseph Aoun in a push to halt violence along the border with Israel.
Washington has been making efforts to reach a diplomatic agreement that would lead to the end of the fighting along the northern border.
Hochstein, who visited Israel in January, met with Defense Minister Yoav Gallant in Tel Aviv.
Galant and IDF representatives briefed Hochstein on the security conditions that would allow the residents of northern Israel to return home. Minister Gallant emphasized that the State of Israel is obligated to a change in the security situation on the border.
During the meeting, Gallant emphasized that Israel would prefer to solve the armed conflict with Hezbollah through diplomatic means, but the window of opportunity for such an option is short.
Last week, CNN reported that US administration and intelligence officials are concerned that Israel may launch a ground invasion into Lebanon in the coming months.
According to the report, Israel may be planning to launch such an operation in the late spring or early summer, if diplomatic efforts to push Hezbollah farther into Lebanon fail.
One senior Biden administration official told CNN, "We are operating in the assumption that an Israeli military operation is in the coming months." The official added that such an operation would "not necessarily" be imminent, but could take place "later this spring." Such an operation, he stressed, "is a distinct possibility."
The hostilities continued during Hochstein’s visit to Lebanon on Monday, as a foreign worker was killed and at least seven others injured, after an antitank missile was fired from Lebanon towards Margaliot in northern Israel.