Some Lebanese Who Fear War is Coming Have an Unusual Backup Plan: Moving to Syria

FILE - Lebanese citizens watch Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah speak on television as black smoke rises following Israeli attacks on a Hezbollah stronghold in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Lebanon, on July 16, 2006. (AP Photo/Kevork Djansezian, File)
FILE - Lebanese citizens watch Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah speak on television as black smoke rises following Israeli attacks on a Hezbollah stronghold in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Lebanon, on July 16, 2006. (AP Photo/Kevork Djansezian, File)
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Some Lebanese Who Fear War is Coming Have an Unusual Backup Plan: Moving to Syria

FILE - Lebanese citizens watch Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah speak on television as black smoke rises following Israeli attacks on a Hezbollah stronghold in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Lebanon, on July 16, 2006. (AP Photo/Kevork Djansezian, File)
FILE - Lebanese citizens watch Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah speak on television as black smoke rises following Israeli attacks on a Hezbollah stronghold in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Lebanon, on July 16, 2006. (AP Photo/Kevork Djansezian, File)

Residents of Beirut's southern suburbs have been scrambling to make contingency plans since an Israeli airstrike on an apartment building in a busy neighborhood killed a top Hezbollah commander and touched off fears of a full-scale war.
For most, that means moving in with relatives or renting homes in Christian, Druze or Sunni-majority areas of Lebanon that are generally considered safer than the Shiite-majority areas where the Hezbollah militant group has its main operations and base of support.
But for a small number, plan B is a move to neighboring Syria.
Although Syria is in its 14th year of civil war, active fighting has long been frozen in much of the country. Lebanese citizens, who can cross the border without a visa, regularly visit Damascus. And renting an apartment is significantly cheaper in Syria than in Lebanon.
Zahra Ghaddar said she and her family were shaken when they saw an apartment building reduced to rubble by the July 30 drone strike in her area, known as Dahiyeh. Along with Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr, two children and three women were killed and dozens more were injured in the targeted Israeli attack.
Previously, the Lebanese capital had been largely untouched by the near-daily cross-border clashes that have displaced around 100,000 people from southern Lebanon and tens of thousands more in Israel since Oct. 8. That's when Hezbollah began firing rockets into northern Israel in support of its ally Hamas, which a day earlier led a deadly raid in Israel that killed some 1,200 people and took another 250 hostage. Israel responded with an aerial bombardment and ground offensive in Gaza that has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians.
In recent weeks, the conflict in Lebanon appeared on the brink of spiraling out of control.
Ghaddar said her family first considered moving within Lebanon but were discouraged by social media posts blaming displaced civilians, along with Hezbollah, for the threat of all-out war. Also, surging demand prompted steep rent hikes.
“We found the rents started at $700, and that’s for a house we wouldn’t be too comfortable in,” she said. That amount is more than many Lebanese earn in a month.
So they looked across the border.
Ghaddar’s family found a four-bedroom apartment in Aleppo, a city in northwestern Syria, for $150 a month. They paid six months' rent in advance and returned to Lebanon.
Israel periodically launches airstrikes on Syria, usually targeting Iranian-linked military sites or militants, but Bashar Assad's government has largely stood on the sidelines of the current regional conflict.
Israel and Hezbollah fought a bruising monthlong war in 2006 that demolished much of southern Lebanon and Beirut's southern suburbs. At the time, some 180,000 Lebanese took refuge in Syria, many taking shelter in schools, mosques and empty factories. Those who could afford it rented houses. Some put down permanent roots.
Rawad Issa, then a teenager, fled to Syria with his parents. They returned to Lebanon when the war ended, but Issa’s father used some of his savings to buy a house in Syria’s Hama province, just in case.
“That way, if another war happened, we would already have a house ready,” Issa said.
The house and surrounding area were untouched by Syria’s civil war, he said. A few weeks ago, his sister and her husband went to get the house ready for the family to return, in case the situation in Lebanon deteriorated.
Issa, who works in video production, said he initially planned to rent an apartment in Lebanon if the conflict expanded, rather than joining his family in Syria.
But in “safe” areas of Beirut, “they are asking for fantastic prices,” he said. One landlord was charging $900 for a room in a shared apartment. “And outside of Beirut, it’s not much better.”
Azzam Ali, a Syrian journalist in Damascus, told The Associated Press that in the first few days after the strike in Dahiyeh, he saw an influx of Lebanese renting hotel rooms and houses in the city. A Lebanese family — friends of a friend — stayed in his house for a few days, he said.
In a Facebook post, he welcomed the Lebanese, saying they “made the old city of Damascus more beautiful.”
After the situation appeared to calm down, “some went back and some stayed here, but most of them stayed,” he said.
No agency has recorded how many people have moved from Lebanon to Syria in recent months. They are spread across the country and are not registered as refugees, making tracking the migration difficult. Anecdotal evidence suggests the numbers are small.
Of 80 people displaced from southern Lebanon living in greater Beirut — including Lebanese, Syrians and Palestinian refugees — at least 20 said they were considering taking refuge in Syria if the war in Lebanon escalated, according to interviews conducted by researchers overseen by Jasmin Lilian Diab, director of the Institute for Migration Studies at the Lebanese American University.
Diab noted that the Lebanese considering this route were a niche group who had “existing networks in Syria, either business networks, family or friends.”
The threat of war has also not prompted a mass reverse migration of Syrians from Lebanon. Some 775,000 Syrians are registered with the UN Refugee Agency in Lebanon, and hundreds of thousands more are believed to be unregistered in the country.
While fighting in Syria has died down, many refugees fear that if they return they could be arrested for real or perceived ties to the opposition to Assad or forcibly conscripted to the army. If they leave Lebanon to escape war they could lose their refugee status, although some cross back and forth via smuggler routes without their movements being recorded.
Many residents of Dahiyeh breathed a sigh of relief when an intense exchange of strikes between Israel and Hezbollah on July 25 turned out to be short-lived. But Ghaddar said she still worries the situation will deteriorate, forcing her family to flee.
“It’s necessary to have a backup plan in any case,” she said.



At Least 6 Killed in Libya’s Tripoli in Clashes Prompted by Killing of Armed Group Leader 

Members of the police are seen in the Libyan capital Tripoli. (EPA)
Members of the police are seen in the Libyan capital Tripoli. (EPA)
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At Least 6 Killed in Libya’s Tripoli in Clashes Prompted by Killing of Armed Group Leader 

Members of the police are seen in the Libyan capital Tripoli. (EPA)
Members of the police are seen in the Libyan capital Tripoli. (EPA)

Clashes between heavily armed militias rocked the Libyan capital, with gunfire and explosions heard across the city following the killing of a powerful armed group leader, officials said. At least six people were killed, they said. 

The hourslong clashes, which involved heavy weapons, took place Monday evening into the early hours of Tuesday and centered in Tripoli’s southern neighborhood of Abu Salim, the officials said. 

The fighting stemmed from the killing of Abdel-Ghani al-Kikli, commander of the Stabilization Support Authority, SSA, on Monday by another rival militia, a senior government and health official said. 

The SSA is an umbrella group of militias that rose to become one of the most powerful groups in western Libya during the country’s long-running conflict. Al-Kikli, who was known as “Gheniwa”, has been accused by Amnesty International of war crimes and other serious rights violations over the past decade. 

Al-Kikli was killed in a facility run by the 444 Brigade, a militia commanded by Mahmoud Hamza, another warlord close to head of the Government of National Unity (GNU) Abdulhamid al-Dbeibah, one of the officials said. 

Hamza’s group and their allies then attacked the offices of SSA across the capital, seizing their assets and detaining dozens of SSA fighters, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity for their safety. 

The Health Ministry’s Ambulance and Emergency Services said in a statement that at least six people were killed in the vicinity of Abu Salim, the SSA stronghold. It said it helped evacuate many families trapped in the clashes. 

Residents reported heavy clashes and explosions in multiple areas in the capital, with dozens of vehicles carrying fighters affiliated with different groups in the streets. 

“It was a nightmare,” said Ahmed Ammer, who lives in the city center, adding that the clashes were reminiscent of the war that engulfed the North African country following the 2011 overthrow and killing of longtime ruler Moammar al-Gaddafi. 

He said the clashes subsided early Tuesday morning, but the situation has been tense with many fighters in the streets. 

Classes in the capital’s schools were suspended on Tuesday, according to the Tripoli-based education ministry. The University of Tripoli also said it suspended studies, exams and administrative work until further notice. 

Dbeibah’s government posted on its social media platforms early Tuesday that its forces carried out a military operation in Abu Salim and took full control of the area. It didn’t provide further details. 

In a statement, the UN mission in Libya expressed alarm about the “intense fighting with heavy weaponry in densely populated civilian areas” and warned that “attacks on civilians and civilian objects may amount to war crimes.” 

Libya has been divided for years between rival administrations in the east and west. Currently, it is governed by Dbeibah’s government in Tripoli and by the administration of Prime Minister Ossama Hammad in the east.