Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to crush any hopes of a ceasefire in his address to United Nations leaders today after Israel vowed to keep fighting Hezbollah militants ‘until victory’.

Britain joined the United States, France and other allies in proposing a 21-day truce on Wednesday, with Sir Keir Starmer urging both sides to ‘step back from the brink’ in his UN speech. 

But speaking as he landed in New York last night, the Israeli prime minister flatly rejected the proposal, saying that his troops would continue to hit Hezbollah positions ‘with full force’ and would not stop until their goals are achieved. His address will be a stark contrast to his speech at the UN almost exactly a year ago – made before the horrific events of October 7 – in which he triumphantly hailed a new era of peace for the Middle East.

A year on from the bloody cross-border attacks by Hamas on Israel, which triggered a war which has left tens of thousands dead, the region appears to be closer than ever to all-out war. Israeli bombing of Iran-backed Hezbollah strongholds around Lebanon has killed hundreds of people this week, while the militant group has retaliated with rocket barrages.

The White House expressed frustration at Israel’s rejection of the truce after hopes were raised early on Thursday that it might be adopted, saying the truce proposal had taken ‘a lot of care and effort’.

‘We wouldn’t have made that statement, we wouldn’t have worked on that if we didn’t have reason to believe that the conversations that we were having with the Israelis in particular, were supportive of the goal there,’ National Security spokesman John Kirby said in a statement Thursday.

Macron said later it was ‘a mistake’ for Netanyahu to refuse a ceasefire and that he would have to take ‘responsibility’ for a regional escalation.

Speaking in Canada where he met with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau – who also backed the ceasefire – Macron noted that the ceasefire plan had been prepared with Netanyahu himself.

The joint ceasefire statement said the situation in Lebanon has become ‘intolerable’ and ‘is in nobody’s interest, neither of the people of Israel nor of the people of Lebanon’. Lebanon’s National News Agency reported that Israel carried out air raids early Friday on several cities in southern Lebanon, with injuries recorded.

The country’s health ministry said late Thursday that Israeli strikes had killed 92 people in the country and injured 153 in the past 24 hours.

More than 1,500 people have been killed since hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah erupted last October, with Thursday’s toll bringing the number of people killed in Israeli strikes on Lebanon since Monday alone to more than 700.

According to the International Organization for Migration, about 118,000 people have been displaced by the fighting in Lebanon over the past week.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Israel’s strategic affairs minister in New York on Thursday, telling him the ceasefire would ‘allow civilians on both sides of the border to return to their homes’.

‘Further escalation of the conflict will only make that objective more difficult,’ his spokesman Matthew Miller said in a statement.

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