US President Joe Biden warned Israel not to proceed with a ground operation in southern Lebanon on Monday.
A reporter asked Biden at the White House, “Israel may now be launching a limited operation into Lebanon. Are you aware of that? Are you comfortable with their plan?”
Biden responded, “I’m more aware than you might know, and I’m comfortable with them stopping."
“We should have a cease-fire now,” he added.
Earlier, the Washington Post reported that the US government has been informed that Israel is planning to launch a limited ground operation in southern Lebanon in the near future.
An American official told the paper that the planned ground operation would be smaller than the operation Israel launched during the Second Lebanon War in 2006 after Hezbollah carried out a deadly cross-border raid and murdered and kidnapped multiple IDF soldiers.
The purpose of this operation is to clear out terrorist infrastructure from southern Lebanon and restore security to northern Israel, where more than 60,000 people have been evacuated from their homes for the last year due to the over 8,000 rockets Hezbollah has fired at Israel since the October 7 masscare.