Israel has talked of a possible ground invasion into Lebanon to drive Hezbollah — an Iranian-backed Shiite group that is the strongest armed force in Lebanon — away from the border. It has moved thousands of troops the north in preparation. Thousands of Lebanese have fled the south in the past week, streaming into Beirut and points further north.

The escalation has raised fears of a repeat – or worse – of the 2006 war between the two sides that wreaked destruction on large parts of southern Lebanon and other parts of the country and saw heavy Hezbollah rocket fire on Israeli cities.

“We now face the risk of an all-out war. Another full-scale war could be devastating for both Israel and Lebanon,” US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin said after talks with his British and Australian counterparts in London.

Antony Blinken

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was at the UN meeting with Israeli officials over the truce proposal. Speaking in an interview with MSNBC, he said major powers, the Europeans and Arab nations were united, “everyone speaking with one clear voice about the need to get that ceasefire in the north.”

“I can’t speak for him,” Blinken said of Netanyahu.

Hezbollah has not yet responded to the proposal for a pause in fighting. Lebanon’s caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati welcomed it, but his government has no sway over the group.

Netanyahu’s office downplayed the initiative, saying in a statement that it was only a proposal and Israel would continue to defend against Hezbollah attacks from Lebanon.

One of Netanyahu’s far-right governing partners threatened to suspend cooperation with his government if it signs onto a temporary ceasefire with Hezbollah – and to quit completely if a permanent deal is reached. It was the latest sign of displeasure from Netanyahu’s allies toward international ceasefire efforts.

“If a temporary ceasefire becomes permanent, we will resign from the government,” said National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, head of the Jewish Power party.

If Ben-Gvir leaves the coalition, Netanyahu would lose his parliamentary majority and could see his government come toppling down, though opposition leaders have said they would offer support for a ceasefire deal.

Hezbollah has insisted it would halt its strikes only if there is a ceasefire in Gaza, where Israel has battled Hamas for nearly a year. That appears out of reach despite months of negotiations led by the United States, Egypt and Qatar.

One day after Hamas’ October 7 attack on southern Israel that triggered the war in Gaza, Hezbollah began firing rockets into northern Israel, bringing Israeli counterfire and a cycle of reprisals that has gone on near daily since. Hezbollah says its barrages target Israeli military posts and are a show of support for the Palestinians.

Before this week, the cross-border barrages had killed about 600 people in Lebanon, mostly militants but including more than 100 civilians, and about four dozen people in Israel, roughly half of them soldiers and the rest civilians. The fighting also forced tens of thousands to flee homes on both sides of the border.

Israeli leaders now say they are determined to drive Hezbollah from the border area to allow its citizens to return home. It says its escalated strikes across Lebanon the past week are targeting Hezbollah rocket launchers and other military infrastructure. Since Monday, strikes have killed more than 690 people in Lebanon, around a quarter of them women and children, according to local health authorities.

Hezbollah in turn has fired hundreds of rockets into Israel, saying they are targeting Israeli military positions. Several people in Israel have been wounded. On Wednesday, the group fired on Tel Aviv for the first time with a longer-range missile that was intercepted.

Early Thursday, an Israeli airstrike hit a building housing Syrian workers and their families near the ancient city of Baalbek in Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa Valley. The Lebanese Health Ministry said 19 Syrians and a Lebanese were killed, one of the deadliest single strikes in Israel’s intensified air campaign. The state news agency had initially reported that 23 people were dead.

Hussein Salloum, a local official in Younine, said most of the dead were women and children.

“We dug through the rubble with our own hands” until a small bulldozer was brought in, Salloum told The Associated Press by telephone. “We had very limited capabilities.”

Lebanon, with a population of around 6 million, hosts nearly 780,000 registered Syrian refugees and hundreds of thousands who are unregistered — the world’s highest refugee population per capita.