Lebanon’s foreign minister voiced disappointment Tuesday in President Joe Biden’s remarks on the Middle East at the United Nations and expressed hope for greater US diplomacy.
“It was not strong, it is not promising, and it would not solve the Lebanese problem,” Abdallah Bou Habib, who was attending the UN General Assembly, told an event of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
“We are still hoping. The United States is the only country that can really make a difference in the Middle East and with regard to Lebanon,” he said.
Biden, in his speech before the General Assembly, warned against “full-scale war” in the Middle East and urged diplomatic solutions both on Lebanon and in the nearly year-old Gaza war.
A senior US official earlier said that the United States would be offering “concrete ideas” to provide an “off-ramp” after Israel upped its attacks against Iran-backed Hezbollah, which had been skirmishing for months with Israel at a lower level.
Bou Habib said that the number of Lebanese displaced by the fighting has soared from around 110,000 before the Israeli strikes in recent days.
“Now probably they’re approaching half a million,” he said.
Noting that Israel had also seen displacement in the northern areas, he said, “All for what?”
“It’s a very difficult situation — a very expensive, costly situation — in a time that the country is still weak economically,” he said.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to change the security balance on the northern front, nearly a year after another Iranian-backed movement, Hamas, carried out the deadliest ever attack inside Israel.
Bou Habib said he was convinced that Iran did not want conflict.
“I don’t think they want to be involved in a war,” he said.
