The United States said Tuesday that it does not want to witness an escalation of the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.

Israeli army chief Herzi Halevi has said that Hezbollah must “pay a very high price” for its continued attacks on northern Israel.

The U.N. Special Coordinator for Lebanon Joanna Wronecka is “deeply concerned by the gradual expansion in the exchange of fire across the Blue Line in scope, scale and intensity, which increases the risks of a broader conflagration and undermines Security Council Resolution 1701 (2006),” her office said in a statement. 

“She urges an immediate halt to this dangerous cycle of violence and return to a cessation of hostilities,” the statement said.

Fighting between Hezbollah and Israel took a dangerous turn this week with Israeli strikes deep into Lebanese territory, further stoking fears of all-out war between the arch-foes.

Hezbollah, a Hamas ally, has exchanged near-daily fire with the Israeli army since war erupted between Israel and the Gaza-based Palestinian militant group on October 7.

Hezbollah shelled a military base in Israel's Ga'aton with dozens of Katyusha rockets and launched a second attack with guided missiles on the Meron air control base in what it said were responses to Israeli attacks on southern Lebanese towns.

The Ga'aton base lies around nine kilometers from the border with Lebanon and the attack is the first to target it since the beginning of hostilities.

U.S. mediator Amos Hochstein held “extraordinary” direct and indirect contacts with all parties in the region in the wake of Monday’s major escalation between Israel and Hezbollah, diplomatic sources said.

The latest Israeli escalation “has not changed Hezbollah’s stance” that “rules out an all-out Israeli war on Lebanon,” the Nidaa al-Watan newspaper reported.

Hezbollah has rejected the French paper that was sent by the French embassy in Beirut to caretaker Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib last Wednesday, a media report said.

UNIFIL Head of Mission and Force Commander Aroldo Lázaro on Tuesday sounded the alarm that over the past days there has been “a concerning shift in the exchanges of fire” between Israel and Hezbollah.

“This conflict has already claimed too many lives and caused significant damage to houses and public infrastructure. It has jeopardized the livelihoods and changed the life of tens of thousands of civilians on both sides of the Blue Line. Yet we now see an expansion and intensification of strikes,” Lázaro said in a statement distributed by UNIFIL.

Days ago, Tala Assaad could hear Israeli strikes near south Lebanon's coastal city of Sidon. Now, she's having lunch at a packed ski resort, eager to disconnect from news of war.

This winter, more well-heeled Lebanese have been hitting the slopes north of Beirut as Lebanon's Hezbollah and arch-foe Israel exchange near-daily fire in the country's south, amid fears of all-out conflict as the Gaza war rages.