A group of governments and international organizations from around the world raised $1 billion to aid the humanitarian crisis in Lebanon as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken continued his tour of the Middle East saying Washington was open to "different options" to ending the war in the Gaza Strip, which has spilled over into neighboring Lebanon.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said $800 million had been raised at the conference in Paris on October 24 to help the hundreds of thousands of people in Lebanon displaced by fighting between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah, a militant group and political party that controls much of southern Lebanon.
Another $200 million was pledged at the conference to help the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF), a national-security force that aids in implementing UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which calls for southern Lebanon to be free of any troops or weapons other than those of the Lebanese state.
"The storm we are currently witnessing is unlike any other, because it carries the seeds of total destruction," Lebanon's caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, said at the donor conference.
The current war between Israel and the Iran-backed groups Hezbollah and Hamas -- which have been designated as terrorist organizations by the United States -- was triggered after Hamas militants made an incursion into Israel on October 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people. They also took some 240 people back to Gaza as hostages.
Israel has since launched a withering offensive that, according to the Hamas-led Heath Ministry in Gaza, has seen around 43,000 people killed while displacing virtually all of Gaza's 2.3 million people.
The European Union has also designated Hamas as a terrorist organization, and while it blacklists Hezbollah's armed wing, it does not give its political party the same designation. Hezbollah’s political party has seats in the Lebanese parliament.
Many Western officials have said the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar earlier this month opened room for reviving peace talks.
Blinken, in Qatar on October 24, said after talks with officials from Egypt and Qatar that the focus was on "options to capitalize on this moment and next steps to move the process forward."
"Going back to the negotiations on cease-fire and the hostages, one of the things we're doing is looking at whether there are different options that we can pursue to get us to a conclusion, to get us to a result," Blinken said.
The talks in Doha are scheduled to include Israeli officials on October 25, while Qatari officials have met with officials in Hamas' political office in the Qatari capital in recent days.