NEW YORK >> France’s foreign minister said Wednesday that his country and the United States are working on a proposal for a 21-day cease-fire proposal “to allow for negotiations” in the escalating conflict between Israel and Hezbollah that has killed more than 600 people in Lebanon in recent days.

Jean-Noël Barrot told the U.N. Security Council during a meeting about the conflict that the proposal would be released shortly. “We are counting on both parties to accept it without delay,” he said.

Barrot said France and the U.S. had consulted with the sides on “final parameters for a diplomatic way out of this crisis,” adding that “war is not unavoidable.”

Earlier Wednesday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the U.S. administration was “intensely engaged with a number of partners to deescalate tensions in Lebanon and to work to get a cease-fire agreement that would have so many benefits for all concerned.”

Blinken and other advisers to President Joe Biden have spent the past three days at and on the sidelines of the annual U.N. General Assembly meeting of world leaders in New York lobbying other countries to support the plan, according to U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic conversations.

Americans hope such a cease-fire could lead to longer-term stability along the border between Israel and Lebanon. Months of Israeli and Hezbollah exchanges of fire across the border drove tens of thousands of people from their homes on both sides of the border, and escalated attacks this week have rekindled fears of a broader war in the Middle East.

Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan and senior advisers Brett McGurk and Amos Hochstein have been meeting with Middle East allies in New York and have been in touch with Israeli officials about the proposal, one of the U.S. officials said. McGurk and Hochstein have been the White House’s chief interlocutors with Israel and Lebanon since the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas, another Iranian-backed group.

An Israeli official said Netanyahu has given the green light to pursue a possible deal, but only if it includes the return of Israeli civilians to their homes. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they were discussing behind-the-scenes diplomacy.

A Lebanese official called them “very serious efforts,” and when asked about the possibility of a halt in the fighting taking effect Thursday, he said it was “not wishful thinking.”

Hezbollah has maintained that it will not halt its fire until there’s a truce in Gaza. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to share details with the media, said Lebanon still does not accept separating the fronts in the Palestinian territory and Lebanon but would not say if or how the proposal might deal with Gaza.