UN warns escalating exchanges between Hezbollah and Israel risk full-scale war

The United Nations has warned that the increasing intensity of exchanges between Hezbollah and Israel “heightens the risk of a full-scale war.”

“Escalation can and must be avoided,” U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.

He pointed to escalating exchanges across the U.N.-drawn boundary between Israel and Lebanon known as the Blue Line on Thursday. They followed Israel’s killing of a senior commander in Hezbollah on Wednesday.

“We reiterate that the danger of miscalculation leading to a sudden and wider conflagration is real,” Dujarric said. “A political and diplomatic solution is the only viable way forward.”

The U.N. spokesman said the Lebanese Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee expressed support Thursday for the U.N. peacekeeping force along the Blue Line in southern Lebanon and for the 2006 U.N. resolution calling for a cease-fire between Hezbollah and Israel in the Lebanon war that year.

The United Nations urges the parties to return to a cessation of hostilities and recommit to implementing the 2006 resolution.

The U.N. special coordinator for Lebanon, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, also met Thursday with Lebanese officials, including Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri and caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati, “underscoring the need for de-escalation across the Blue Line,” Dujarric said.

International diplomats are scrambling to prevent near-daily clashes between Israel and Hezbollah from spiraling into an all-out war that could possibly lead to a direct confrontation between Israel and Iran, which is Hezbollah’s main backer. Hezbollah says it will stop its attacks if Israel agrees to a cease-fire with Hamas in its nine-month war in the Gaza Strip.

Some Israeli officials have said they are seeking a diplomatic solution and hope to avoid war. At the same time, they have warned that destruction seen in Gaza will be repeated in Lebanon if war breaks out.

Hezbollah, meanwhile, is far more powerful than Hamas and believed to have a vast arsenal of rockets and missiles capable of striking anywhere in Israel.