U.S. Officials Believe Israel Will Not Conduct Full Invasion of Lebanon

After a weekend of intense talks, the American officials said they believed that Israel was planning only smaller, targeted incursions in southern Lebanon.

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Israeli vehicles staged in northern Israel on Sunday. Israeli special operations forces have been conducting raids into southern Lebanon.

American officials said on Monday that they believed they had persuaded Israel not to conduct a major ground invasion of southern Lebanon.

The understanding came after intense talks over the weekend. The United States saw some signs that Israel was preparing to move into Lebanon, and some American officials believed a major ground operation was imminent.

After the discussions, U.S. officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence and diplomatic negotiations, said they believed Israel was planning only smaller, targeted incursions into southern Lebanon. The recent raids by Israeli special operations forces would be designed to eliminate fighting positions from which Hezbollah has attacked towns in northern Israel.

But Israeli officials assured their American counterparts that they did not intend to follow up those incursions with a bigger operation by conventional forces or by occupying parts of southern Lebanon. U.S. officials said they believed the commandos would quickly pull back after the operations were finished.

It is not clear if Israel has made a final decision, and it is possible that a full-scale invasion could still follow targeted raids, despite the White House’s concerns.

On Monday, after the raids became public, U.S. officials said the possibility of “mission creep” remained, and that Israel could decide it needed to support the raids with a larger force. But for now, American officials believe, Israel will not conduct a full-scale invasion.

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