EU top diplomat urges Lebanon and Israel to ease tensions along their border

BEIRUT (AP) — The European Union’s top diplomat on Thursday urged Lebanon and Israel to work on deescalating tensions along the border, saying that since his last trip to the region in January “the drums of war have not stopped pounding.”

The comments of Josep Borrell, the EU foreign policy chief, came as members of the militant Hezbollah group and Israel’s military carried out cross border attacks along the tense frontier on Thursday.

Western and Arab officials have visited Beirut over the past year to try to reduce tensions along the Lebanon-Israel border, but Hezbollah officials have said they will only stop carrying out attacks along the border when Israel stops its offensive in the Gaza Strip.

“Since I lasted visited Lebanon in January the drums of war have not stopped pounding,” Borrell told reporters in Beirut during a joint press conference with Lebanon’s Foreign Minister Abdallah Bouhabib. “Since then the fears I was outlining have been growing, more escalation, fears of a spillover of the war in Gaza and fears of more widespread human suffering.”

In late August, Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah pulled back after an exchange of heavy fire that briefly raised fears of an all-out war.

Borrell said that according to the United Nations more than 4,000 residential buildings have been completely destroyed in Lebanon and more than 110,000 Lebanese have been forced to leave their homes along the border. He said the same thing is happening on the Israeli side of the border.

The European official said that his message is that the European Union “stands on the side of the Lebanese people to help to overcome the threats and challenges as much as we can.”

More than 500 people have been killed in Lebanon by Israeli strikes since Oct. 8, most of them fighters with Hezbollah and other armed groups but also more than 100 civilians. In northern Israel, 23 soldiers and 26 civilians have been killed by strikes from Lebanon.

“We need to deescalate military tensions and I use this opportunity to urge all sides to pursue this path,” said Borrell, who on Tuesday visited U.N. peacekeepers deployed in southern Lebanon along the border with Israel.

He added that the “full and asymmetrical implementation” of the U.N. Security Council resolution that ended the summer 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war should pave the way for a comprehensive settlement including land border demarcation and allowing the return of people and reconstruction in the affected border areas.

“The European Union is doing a lot but we don’t have a magic wand,” he said.