‘Not serious’: Blinken again urges diplomacy as Israel strikes Beirut

Antony Blinken warns region faces ‘precarious moment’, but experts say US’s failure to pressure Israel fuelling crisis.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has reiterated that the United States believes diplomacy is the best path forward as Israel continues to bombard Lebanon, pushing the region into a worsening crisis.

Speaking to reporters in New York on Friday afternoon, the top US diplomat said the Middle East and the world faced “a precarious moment”.

“The choices that all parties make in the coming days will determine which path this region is on, with profound consequences for its people now and possibly for years to come,” Blinken said.

“The path to diplomacy may seem difficult to see at this moment, but it is there and in our judgement, it is necessary,” he added. “We will continue to work intensely with all parties to urge them to choose that course.”

Blinken’s remarks came just hours after the Israeli military launched a series of air strikes on the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital, Beirut, against what it said was Lebanese group Hezbollah’s “central headquarters”.

At least six people were killed and more than 70 others were injured in the attacks on the Dahiyeh area, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry, in what witnesses described as an “unprecedented” assault that flattened six residential buildings.

The death toll is expected to rise as rescue crews dig through the rubble.

The attack followed days of Israeli bombings across southern and eastern Lebanon that have killed hundreds of people and displaced tens of thousands.

The uptick in violence came after months of firings across the Lebanon-Israel border between Israeli forces and Hezbollah. The Lebanese group said it began launching rockets into northern Israel in solidarity with Palestinians under Israeli bombardment in Gaza.

The US, France and other countries presented a Lebanon ceasefire proposal this week amid the recent surge in violence, but it was almost immediately rebuffed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Netanyahu told the United Nations General Assembly earlier on Friday that Israel would fight until “total victory”, stressing that his government would not stop until displaced Israeli citizens can return to their homes in the north of the country.

Critics have lambasted the US administration for failing to use its leverage to pressure Israel – the country’s top Middle East ally – to end its attacks both in Lebanon and in the Gaza Strip.

For months, experts have warned that Israel’s war on Gaza, which began in October of last year and has killed more than 41,500 Palestinians to date, risked spilling over into a wider regional conflict.

But US President Joe Biden’s administration has rejected calls to condition aid to Israel to try to secure a ceasefire in Gaza or prevent further escalation in Lebanon.

Washington provides $3.8bn in military assistance to Israel annually, and Biden has authorised additional weapons sales to the country as the Gaza war drags on.

His administration has also provided diplomatic backing for Israel amid international condemnation over its Gaza offensive and recent bombings in Lebanon.

Against that backdrop, Mohamad Elmasry, a professor at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, said Blinken’s remarks on Friday were “pretty predictable”.

“He’s got a very narrow playbook, so he repeats a lot of the same things,” he told Al Jazeera.

Elmasry also questioned whether the US government truly valued diplomacy, given its unwillingness to pressure Israel.

“The US is not at all serious about peace and diplomacy. I think that the US would prefer it if it were possible, but it’s not very high on the US’s priority list,” he said.

“If it were high on the priority list, they would have exercised leverage over Israel many, many months ago. But they’ve refused to do that.”

Other experts also told Al Jazeera this week that the Biden administration’s policies over the past year have been a “disastrous failure” that led to the current crisis in Lebanon.

“They [the Israelis] know every single warning from the administration has been ignored — explicitly and emphatically, repeatedly — and there’s never been a consequence,” said Khaled Elgindy, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute think tank.

“Every aspect of the administration’s policy has been a failure – from the humanitarian, to the diplomatic, to the moral, to the legal, to the political – in every conceivable way.”