Israel’s ferocious assault on Hezbollah, its most violent exchange with the Lebanese militant group since 2006, is not only a major widening of the war but also a significant widening of the breach between President Biden and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

对真主党的猛烈攻击是自2006年以来以色列与这个黎巴嫩激进组织之间最激烈的交锋。这不仅显著扩大了战争的规模，也是拜登总统与本雅明·内塔尼亚胡总理之间裂痕加大的表现。

For a year now, Mr. Biden has warned publicly and privately about the need to avoid a regional war, one that could easily escalate into direct conflict between Israel and Iran. His caution was a major topic of conversation when he traveled to Israel days after the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas, both to promise Israel that America would stand by it, and to caution against making the same mistakes the United States made after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

一年来，拜登一直在公开和私下警告，有必要避免地区战争，这样的战争很容易升级为以色列和伊朗之间的直接冲突。10月7日哈马斯袭击事件发生几天后，他前往以色列，既向以色列承诺美国将支持以色列，又提醒以色列不要重蹈美国在2001年9月11日袭击事件后的覆辙。当时他谨慎态度成为人们谈论的主要话题。

Mr. Biden even held on to hope for the transformative peace deal for the Middle East that he thought was within grasp a year ago, believing it could survive even as the war between Hamas and Israel tore at its foundations.

拜登甚至还对一年前他认为指日可待的中东变革性和平协议抱有希望，他相信，即使哈马斯和以色列之间的战争破坏了和平协议的基础，协议仍能维持下去。

Now, Mr. Biden’s aides say, the president is beginning to acknowledge that he is simply running out of time. With only four months left in office, the chances of a cease-fire and hostage deal with Hamas look dimmer than at any time since Mr. Biden laid out a plan at the beginning of the summer. And the risk of a wider war has never looked greater.

拜登的助手说，现在，总统开始承认，他的时间已经不多了。拜登的任期只剩下四个月，与哈马斯达成停火和人质协议的可能性似乎比今年夏初拜登提出一项计划以来的任何时候都要渺茫。爆发更大范围战争的风险从未如此之大。

In public, at least, administration officials insist they have not given up. They say they simply cannot move ahead while missiles are bringing death and destruction to northern Israel and southern Lebanon. And they are clinging to the hope that even this level of missile and rocket exchanges between Israel and Hezbollah will not turn into the regional war they have been trying to stave off.

至少在公开场合，政府官员仍坚称他们没有放弃。他们说，当导弹的轰炸正给以色列北部和黎巴嫩南部带来死亡和破坏时，他们根本无法取得进展。但他们还抱着一线希望，认为即使以色列和真主党之间的导弹和火箭弹交火达到这种程度，也不会演变成他们一直试图避免的地区战争。

“We could pick any moment, any set of rockets launched by Hezbollah, any set of strikes by Israel, and say, ‘Is this an escalation? Is that an escalation?’” Jake Sullivan, Mr. Biden’s national security adviser, insisted over the weekend. He spoke just hours after Israel killed a Hezbollah leader wanted for his role in two 1983 bombings in Beirut that killed over 350 people, most of them U.S. service members.

“无论什么时候，每当真主党发射一组火箭，每当以色列发动一次打击，我们都会问，‘这是升级吗？这是一种升级吗？’”拜登的国家安全顾问沙利文周末坚称。就在他发表讲话的几个小时前，以色列击毙了一名真主党领导人，此人因参与1983年贝鲁特两起爆炸事件而被通缉，爆炸造成350多人死亡，其中大多数是美国军人。

上周在贝鲁特，救援人员试图在以色列空袭现场寻找尸体。

“I think it’s not a particularly useful exercise,” Mr. Sullivan continued. “For us, the most useful exercise is to try to drive both parties to a place where we get an agreed and durable outcome that can end the cycle and keep us from ending up in the larger war.”

“我认为这不是一种特别有用的行为，”沙利文接着说。“对我们来说，最有用的是努力推动双方达成共识，达成持久的结果，结束这种循环，使我们不至于陷入更大规模的战争。”

In many ways, Mr. Sullivan cannot afford to take a different view, at least in public. There is no utility in declaring that Mr. Biden’s plans are shattered for now. While Mr. Sullivan insisted on Saturday that “I do still believe there is a path to get there,” a “winding path, a frustrating path,” many around him think the clock is running out on the president’s plan. In fact, they note, the United States has not even been able to present the “bridging plan” to a final cease-fire — something it said three weeks ago was imminent — because there is no chance either Mr. Netanyahu or Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader, will consider it at this time.

在很多方面来说，沙利文也只能保持着这样一种看法，至少在公开场合是这样。宣布拜登的计划目前已经破灭并无益处。尽管沙利文周六坚称，“我仍然相信有一条路可以抵达目标”，一条“曲折的、充满阻挠的道路”，但他身边的许多人认为，总统实施计划的时间已经不多了。他们指出，事实上，美国甚至还没能提出最终停火的“过渡性计划”——美国三周前还说即将实现这样的计划——因为内塔尼亚胡和哈马斯领导人叶海亚·辛瓦尔目前都不可能考虑这个计划。

“Well, at the moment, we don’t feel like we are in a position, if we put something down today, to get both sides to say yes to it,” Mr. Sullivan said — an understatement, to say the least.

“目前，我们不认为我们处于这样一个位置——如果我们今天提出一些东西，能让双方都同意，”沙利文说——这样的说法至少是在淡化现实的严峻。

Mr. Biden’s best hope now, in his final months in office, is that his successor will embrace a transformative deal in which Saudi Arabia recognizes Israel, and Israel agrees to the two-state solution that would give Palestinians a true home and a place in the international community.

对目前的拜登来说，在他任期的最后几个月里，最多只能指望他的继任者能够接受一项变革性的协议：沙特阿拉伯承认以色列，以色列同意两国方案，这将给巴勒斯坦人一个真正的家园，并在国际社会中占有一席之地。

In private, though, many members of Mr. Biden’s national security team make little effort these days to hide their exasperation with the prime minister. They talk more openly now about the president’s shouting matches in phone calls with Mr. Netanyahu, or Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken’s frustrating visits to Jerusalem in which he got private assurances from the prime minister, only to watch Mr. Netanyahu contradict them hours later.

不过，在私下里，拜登的国家安全团队的许多成员这些天几乎不掩饰他们对以色列总理的愤怒。他们现在更公开地谈论总统在电话中与内塔尼亚胡的争吵，以及国务卿布林肯令人沮丧的耶路撒冷之行。在那次访问中，他在私下里得到了内塔尼亚胡的保证，但几小时后，内塔尼亚胡又违背了这些保证。

They now wonder aloud whether the prime minister kept throwing new conditions into cease-fire negotiations in hopes of keeping his fragile coalition together, or to stay in office and out of court.

他们现在不禁要问，这位总理在停火谈判中不断提出新的条件，是希望维持其脆弱联盟的团结，还是为了自己能够继续留任，不用上法庭。

And while they say he has every right to attack Hezbollah, which has become a “state within a state” in Lebanon, they also say it was telling that the White House announced no phone calls between the president and the prime minister as beepers exploded in the pockets of Hezbollah members and missiles flew. It seemed a sign of how little they had to say to each other.

虽然他们说，总理完全有权攻击已成为黎巴嫩“国中之国”的真主党，但他们也说，当真主党成员口袋里的传呼机爆炸，导弹横飞之时，白宫却宣布，总统和总理之间没有通话，这很说明问题。这似乎表明他们之间没什么话可说。

Dennis B. Ross, the longtime Middle East negotiator, said in an interview on Monday that part of the problem was that Mr. Biden and Mr. Netanyahu had never seen eye-to-eye about their ultimate goals — Mr. Netanyahu’s certainty that he can eradicate every existential threat to his country and Mr. Biden’s determination to bring about the peace deal that has eluded every American president since Richard Nixon.

长期担任中东问题谈判代表的丹尼斯·罗斯在周一接受采访时表示，部分问题在于，拜登和内塔尼亚胡从未就他们的最终目标达成一致——内塔尼亚胡确信自己能够消除他的国家面临的所有致命威胁，而拜登则决心达成自理查德·尼克松以来的历任美国总统都未能达成的和平协议。

“Statecraft is all about aligning objectives and means,” said Mr. Ross, now a distinguished fellow at the Washington Institute. “And I don’t see the objectives or the means to achieve them in what Israel is doing now.” Mr. Ross said that Israel’s calculation was that it could force Hezbollah’s longtime leader, Hassan Nasrallah, and his Iranian backers to recognize they will pay a huge price for continuing to attack northern Israel until there is an accommodation with Hamas in Gaza.

“治国之道就是让目标和手段保持一致，”目前任华盛顿研究所杰出研究员的罗斯说。“我看不出以色列目前的行动有什么目标，或实现这些目标的手段。”罗斯说，以色列的想法是，这样做可以迫使真主党的长期领导人哈桑·纳斯鲁拉及其伊朗支持者认识到，在以色列与加沙的哈马斯达成和解之前，他们将为继续袭击以色列北部付出巨大代价。

很难想象以色列总理本雅明·内塔尼亚胡能够消灭真主党，就像他无法消灭哈马斯一样。

Israeli officials counter that their objectives are straightforward: to mount a missile campaign that will wipe out Hezbollah’s command-and-control operations and its stores of weapons. And since last week, when Israel announced that the center of the conflict was moving north, to Lebanon, that process has been a methodical one.

以色列官员反驳称，他们的目标很明确：发动一场导弹袭击，摧毁真主党的指挥系统及其武器储备。自上周以色列宣布冲突中心向北转移到黎巴嫩以来，这一进程一直有条不紊地进行着。

The explosion of pagers and walkie-talkies last week was a start, aimed at not only maiming members of Hezbollah, which the United States designated as a foreign terrorist organization decades ago, but also at making them fearful of communicating with one another. It was a plan that was years in the making, involving front companies that got deeply into Hezbollah’s supply chain. The fact that Israel’s leadership chose to execute it last week was a sign that its broader campaign was about to begin. (Israel has neither confirmed nor denied any role in the explosions.)

上周，寻呼机和对讲机的爆炸只是一个开始，其目的不仅在于重创真主党成员（美国在几十年前就将真主党列为外国恐怖组织），也为了让他们害怕彼此交流。这是一个酝酿多年的计划，涉及到深入真主党供应链的幌子公司。以色列领导层上周选择执行该计划，表明他们即将展开更广泛的行动。（以色列既没有证实也没有否认在爆炸中扮演了角色。）

Now that campaign has begun. Israeli special forces dropped into Syria, blowing up a facility that is believed to be manufacturing missiles — and supplying Hezbollah. And in Lebanon, Israeli missiles appear to be directed at underground storage tunnels, basements, anyplace where Israeli intelligence believes that tens or hundreds of thousands of weapons are hidden. The number of secondary explosions visible in some video of the attacks suggests that at least some of that intelligence was accurate, American and Israeli officials say.

现在，行动已经开始。以色列特种部队空降叙利亚，炸毁了一个据信制造导弹——并提供给真主党——的设施。在黎巴嫩，以色列的导弹似乎瞄准了地下储存隧道、地下室，以及任何以色列情报机构认为藏有数万或数十万件武器的地方。美国和以色列官员表示，从一些袭击视频中可见的二次爆炸次数表明，至少部分情报是准确的。

The scope and scale of the operation suggest that Mr. Netanyahu is no longer satisfied with carrying out periodic brush-backs of Hezbollah’s power. In his view, Oct. 7 changed everything and the time has come to solve the problem once and for all — both in Gaza and in Lebanon.

这次行动的范围和规模表明，内塔尼亚胡不再满足于定期削弱真主党的力量。在他看来，10月7日改变了一切，现在是时候一劳永逸地解决加沙和黎巴嫩问题了。

But it is hard to imagine that Mr. Netanyahu will be able to eliminate Hezbollah, just as he has been unable to eliminate Hamas. And it is harder still to imagine that Mr. Netanyahu will spend much time worrying about crossing Mr. Biden. He knows that if former President Donald J. Trump is elected, he will have a far freer hand to prosecute the war against Hamas and Hezbollah the way he sees fit.

但是，很难想象内塔尼亚胡能够消灭真主党，就像他无法消灭哈马斯一样。而更加难以想象的是，内塔尼亚胡会需要去担心如何能越过拜登行事。他知道，如果前总统特朗普当选，他将有更大的自由，以他认为合适的方式对哈马斯和真主党发动战争。

“Israelis, especially the right wing of Netanyahu’s coalition, are determined to solve this, and they think they left this all to fester too long,” said Steven A. Cook of the Council on Foreign Relations, who just returned from a trip to talk with Israeli officials. “And they think they got bad advice from the U.S.”

“以色列人，尤其是内塔尼亚胡联盟中的右翼，决心要解决这个问题，他们认为这个问题拖得太久，一直在恶化，”外交关系委员会的史蒂文·库克说，他刚刚结束与以色列官员的会谈。“他们认为美国给了他们错误的建议。”

Mr. Biden, for his part, he noted, “never really used his leverage over Netanyahu,” a reference to the president’s power to cut off specific kinds of military aid if the prime minister ignored his counsel. “And you don’t have leverage unless you are willing to use it.”

他指出，拜登“从未真正动用过自己的影响力去左右内塔尼亚胡”。他指的是，如果总理无视他的建议，总统有权切断特定种类的军事援助。“除非你愿意使用这种手段，否则你就没有左右他的能力。”