Of the three ways (land, sea and air) to escape from a Lebanon bombed by Israel, Nahida Al Matbuh and her son Ali Haidar Mahdi have chosen the one that a priori It sounds more counterintuitive: crossing into Syria, a country at war for 13 years. “Here, now, it is more dangerous than there,” explains Haidar Mahdi, 22 years old. Until this morning they did not decide to leave their small town in the Becá Valley, one of the areas hardest hit these days by the Israeli army, but the fall of a bomb “very close to home” has brought them to Masnaa, the precarious – but main – passage on the 375 kilometer border between both countries. My hand still shakes when I remember it. Do you see it? […] I think Syria is a little, not much, better than the Becá,” explains the mother.
It has not been a thoughtful choice, nor with many alternatives. Rather, it is about people who have never gotten a passport fleeing to where their community, the Shiites, are heading. “We have family in Canada and we thought about going there, but we have never asked for a passport. And now there is no time for that,” explains Al Matbuh surrounded by more suitcases and bags than children.
– When do you expect to be able to return?
― When the situation calms down. I trust that within a week there will be a truce or ceasefire and we can be back home, God willing.
A utility car passes by with 12 family members packed like sardines. The bag with the mattresses bears the logo of the UN refugee agency, UNHCR. Almost no one travels light.
Al Matbuh’s family picks up their bags from the floor and prepares to cross the entrance gate of Masnaa, which has become a hub of cars with Syrian or Lebanese license plates since the massive Israeli bombing on the 23rd, which caused 558 deaths. Some carry suitcases, mattresses and blankets tied to the ceiling. Shared vans unload children, adults and the elderly from time to time.
His choice is not at all strange, based on the figures. The border between safety and danger on either side of Masnaa has become so blurred in recent days that almost 180,000 people have crossed it in just one week. On the 23rd alone, it is estimated that some 5,000 Lebanese families crossed.
More than 52,000 were Lebanese citizens, according to Syria’s General Directorate of Migration and Passports. Almost all Shiites, who are hosted by local Syrian committees affiliated with the Shiite party-militia Hezbollah (which fights on the side of the Syrian leader, Bashar El Assad) or who cross the country until they reach Iraq (with a Shiite majority), which has just withdrawn the requirement of a passport for Lebanese to enter.
They only need the DNI, which Zeina and her son, Ali Daher, take advantage of to turn necessity into a virtue. They complain that they have just paid one hundred dollars each and that they still have many hours of driving until they reach Iraq, but they seem happy to be able to visit a city as sacred and important to the Shiites as Karbala. “They have told us that there are reception centers there, and that everything is organized. And here the situation is getting worse. We leave until everything calms down and,” he adds, clenching his fist in defense of the “resistance” that Hezbollah embodies, “we return victorious.”
The other 125,000 are Syrian refugees who have returned to their country, undoing the path they took since the outbreak of the war in 2011, when Lebanon seemed to them then a safer place. The elderly Amina adds to the statistics this Tuesday, sad and without a big project ahead of her. “We left our home in Syria under shelling and we don’t want to relive it here now. It is very humiliating for me to experience the same horrors here and there,” he summarizes.
After seven years in Lebanon, Amina still has a house in Syria to return to (many are destroyed or the regime has handed them over), but she knows from neighbors that it has been looted. “They haven’t left anything. We will arrive and there will be no furniture, no water, no electricity,” he laments. Is it better than Lebanon then? “Well… It seems that in the area we are going to there are not many attacks now. And here the children are afraid. Not only from the bombings, but also from the sonic bombs,” he says, referring to when Israeli fighters cause a roar as they pass, breaking the speed of sound.
Others do not leave because of fear, but because of money. Syrian Qais Abdesalam, 18, has not been paid for two weeks because he worked at a cleaning company in Dahiye, the southern suburb of Beirut that Israel bombs daily. The company has stopped operating and he, unable to pay the rent, so he carries a thousand boxes and a gas stove with the help of his sister to – he explains without drama – try his luck again in his country: “In Damascus, where I’m going , sometimes there is something, but little more. Today Lebanon is more dangerous.”
The other border: Israel
Lebanon only borders one other country: Israel. The same one whose troops have just crossed it and bombed it with violence. Nor could it be crossed under other circumstances. The two countries lack diplomatic relations or official boundaries, so those who escape these days from a Lebanon that looks uglier every day have two other options: by air and by sea.
The first has basically become an impossible mission. In the last two weeks, since the detonation by Mossad of thousands of beepers and walkie talkies Commissioned by Hezbollah, international airlines have canceled or extended the suspension of many routes to Beirut and Tel Aviv, just as demand for more flights skyrocketed. The result: there are no tickets left to leave Lebanon for a few days, or two weeks, depending on the destination, according to those who have tried to buy them.
The electronic departure board at the capital’s airport seems more typical of North Korea than of a country with a tourist tradition and an important diaspora. Except for some solitary flights by Iraqi or Tunisian companies, all correspond to the Lebanese flag airline, Middle East Airlines, which has barely reduced the number of landings and takeoffs.
One of those flights left an iconic image last Saturday, captured by chance by Al Jazeera television cameras. While a fireball rose over Dahiye – from one of the 40 bombs of up to one ton that Israel dropped to kill Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah – a plane continued towards the landing strip, a few kilometers away. Dahiye is between the city and the airport.
Added to this is the pressure from foreigners and Lebanese with dual passports. Canada, for example, has reserved 800 seats on commercial flights for its nationals. The rest of the Western countries, such as the United States, France or Spain, encourage their citizens to leave immediately, now that there are commercial airplanes.
Different profiles
Almost everyone is leaving Lebanon these days for the same reason, the Israeli bombings, but with very different budgets and profiles. In the Dbayeh marina, north of Beirut, the escape is not precisely organized by Hezbollah, nor are cheap bags produced in China seen, nor is an identity document sufficient. Given the problems with flying, hundreds of Lebanese or double nationals with money, passports and Schengen visas are paying between 1,200 and 1,500 dollars to reach Cyprus by yacht, says a skipper who prefers not to be identified in the wooden cove.
His pleasure boat can accommodate 10 people, who equally pay for the $15,000 trip. It is usually organized by captains, who pass clients from one to another. He boasts one of the 12 ships that leave every day, on demand, from the port of Dbayeh towards Cyprus, a member country of the EU. “Normally, I don’t make these types of trips, but they are asking me for them a lot,” he explains. In total, he estimates, about 400 people have traveled this way.
Today it has no passengers, because the sea is too rough for the journey, but it has been filling the ship since the 23rd, when Israel caused the deadliest day in Lebanon since the 1990 civil war and requests skyrocketed. The boat was only his plan B. A, the plane, but there was no way and no time to waste.
One of them is Georges, 39 years old. He works in the United Arab Emirates, but he was in Beirut on sabbatical and began to see how things were heating up. He had already bought a plane ticket for October 6, but it seemed too “risky” to stay until then. “I was not only worried about the war, but also about the internal social situation.” […] The flights took a long time to leave. “I decided to leave before it escalated,” he says.
Without a flight soon, but with a Schengen visa in his passport, he opted for the boat to Cyprus. From there, he flew to Armenia, where his parents had been for weeks and where his origins are. “Some friends told me that all the boats were leaving the marina and I saw that I had up to three or four options, so I decided. “It was the most comfortable solution.”
