WASHINGTON DC – US President Joe Biden has spent nearly a year vowing his determination to prevent the war in Gaza engulfing the wider Middle East. On Tuesday, he repeated that resolve in his last ever United Nations speech as president, as he addressed the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon. And Biden’s calls for restraint from the podium of the UN, like his pleas for Israel and Hamas to finally reach a ceasefire and hostage release deal, are being heard in the hall but not in the region.

On Monday, Israel unleashed hundreds of airstrikes on Lebanon, inflicting the deadliest day on the country since the end of its bloody, sectarian civil war more than three decades ago. Israel’s bombardment killed more than 500 people, according to Lebanese health officials. Hezbollah, the Iran-backed armed group that dominates the country,  reeling and damaged from Israel’s wave of exploding pager attacks last week – launched hundreds of rockets into northern Israel, smashing homes and setting streets ablaze.

Once again the US is trying to restrain Israel, the key regional ally it arms, and urging its adversaries against escalating too, all the while seeking a diplomatic outcome that the sides themselves lack either the ability or will to agree Israel says it’s acting to disarm the Lebanese militia so Israeli residents can return to their homes in the north. Hezbollah says it’s been striking Israel for the past 11 months to deter and degrade Israeli attacks on Palestinians in Gaza. Months of shuttle diplomacy by the US envoy Amos Hochstein building on already established UN Security Resolutions on Israel and Hezbollah have come to nothing.

Instead, in another split screen moment as Biden was urging calm at the podium at the UN, the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu posted a video on X vowing: “We will continue to hit Hezbollah. He who has a missile in his living room and a rocket in his garage – he will not have a home. The White House supports what it calls Israel’s right to hit Hezbollah. But the often dysfunctional political relationship with the Israeli leadership has again become apparent over recent weeks, amid serious concerns in the administration that the exploding pager attacks and subsequent Israeli airstrikes could lead to all out war. No call between Biden and Netanyahu was announced despite the crisis of the last week. US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, recently made his tenth trip to the region since the 7 October attacks, but for the first time did not visit Israel. (BBC)…[+]