Why Lebanese citizens are joining the migrant tide out of the Middle East

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Updated 26 August 2022
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Why Lebanese citizens are joining the migrant tide out of the Middle East

  • The idea of paying people smugglers who help migrants cross the Mediterranean Sea has increasing appeal
  • The risks Syrians, Palestinians and Lebanese are willing to take indicate the severity of Lebanon’s overlapping crises

DUBAI: Even before the economic collapse in Lebanon, Syrian and Palestinian refugees living there were struggling to get by. Many chose to uproot themselves once again and set out in search of a better life overseas, often turning to people smugglers for help.

Now, the situation looks so hopeless that a growing number of Lebanese citizens who lack the means to pay for safe and legal passage abroad are also risking their lives to make the same dangerous, illegal sea crossings to Europe.

In early June, the Lebanese military apprehended 64 people in the north of the country who were attempting to board a smuggling vessel bound for Cyprus. Among them were several Lebanese citizens, driven to desperation by severe economic hardship.

“I cannot feed my family. I feel like less of a man every day,” Abu Abdullah, a 57-year-old delivery worker from Tripoli, the poorest city in the country, told Arab News. “I would rather risk my life at sea than hear the cries of my children when they grow hungry.”

Inflation, unemployment, shortages of food, fuel and medicine, a crumbling healthcare system, and dysfunctional governance have created a perfect storm of poverty and hopelessness.

Shortage of grain as a result of the war in Ukraine has compounded Lebanon’s economic woes, with the prices of staples skyrocketing. Queues for bread are a common sight in many towns while public-sector workers have often gone on strike demanding better pay.

The nation’s currency has lost about 95 percent of its value since 2019. As of July, the minimum monthly wage was worth the equivalent of $23 based on the black market exchange rate of 29,500 Lebanese pounds to the dollar. Before the financial collapse, it was worth $444.

About half of the population now lives below the poverty line.

“My salary barely lasts a few weeks and the tips I get amount to nothing,” said Abu Abdullah. “One of my sons roams around the neighborhood dumpster diving, looking for tins and plastic to sell. It breaks my heart having to see him do this. But in order to eat we don’t have another choice.”

Since 2019, Lebanon has been in the throes of its worst-ever financial crisis. The effects have been compounded by the economic strain of the COVID-19 pandemic and the nation’s political paralysis.

For many Lebanese, the final straw was the devastating explosion at Beirut’s port on Aug. 4, 2020. At least 218 people were killed and 7,000 injured by the blast, which caused at least $15 billion in property damage and left an estimated 300,000 people homeless.

These concurrent crises have sent thousands of young Lebanese abroad in search of greater financial security and more opportunities, including many of the country’s top medical professionals and educators.

For those who remain and feel they no longer have anything left to lose, the thought of paying people smugglers to illegally ferry them across the Mediterranean to an EU country has become increasingly appealing, despite the obvious dangers.

In April, a boat carrying 84 people capsized off Lebanon’s coast near Tripoli after it was intercepted by the navy. Only 45 of the people on board were rescued. Six are known to have drowned, including a baby. The rest are officially classified as missing.

“A relative of mine lost her husband and toddler at sea around two years ago,” said Abu Abdullah. “The tragedy still haunts the family. And yet, here I am mulling and entertaining the thought that I should get on the next boat.”

The situation is perhaps even tougher for the millions of Syrian and Palestinian refugees living in Lebanon. Long treated as an underclass and denied access to several forms of employment and welfare, many of them now face a similar dilemma of whether to stay put or attempt a risky journey.




Medics wait on the pier as soldiers search for survivors off the coast of the nothern Lebanese city of Tripoli after a migrant boat capsized. At least six people died and almost 50 others were rescued. (AFP)

“I escaped the war in Syria and lived in Lebanon for three years,” Islam Mejel, a 23-year-old Syrian Palestinian, told Arab News from his new home in Greece.

“I tried time and time again and applied for visas to travel legally by land but who would give a Syrian Palestinian man a visa? I fled from Lebanon — I had to. I am the eldest and have to take care of the family I left back in Lebanon.”

Mejel described the terrifying ordeal he experienced while crossing the sea to Greece.

INNUMBERS

* 22% of Lebanese households now considered food insecure.

* 1.3m Syrian refugees in Lebanon categorized as food insecure.

(Source: World Food Program)

“We were a group of 50,” he said. “They split us between two small boats. The boats couldn’t handle the passengers. The second boat sank. Some survived and the rest were lost at sea.

“When we finally made it to a Greek island, the captain scuttled the boat and radioed for organizations to come and help us. Then he left. I knew the chances of me dying were high but I had to try.”

The extreme risks that refugees are willing to take to find security and economic opportunity abroad, often after having been displaced several times, speak volumes about the severity of Lebanon’s socio-economic collapse.

“For Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, there were already multiple layers of vulnerabilities they were exposed to prior to the crisis, such as the prohibition on owning houses or property and prohibitions on working in liberal professions, alongside limited social and political rights,” a researcher of Palestinian refugee issues in Lebanon, who asked not to be named, told Arab News.

“What’s happening now is an accumulation of crises built over time — COVID-19, the economic collapse — that have built upon pre-existing vulnerabilities the Palestinian refugee community previously faced in Lebanon.”

The researcher said the rate of illegal immigration, according to some sources, has increased in recent months, particularly among the youth.

One well-known trafficker is said to charge more than $5,000 to get a person out of Lebanon by plane, transiting through three airports before arriving in Europe where the migrants tear up their identity papers and apply for refugee status. For those without the financial means for this air route, the option of traveling by sea is less expensive but much more risky.

However, some sources the researcher spoke to said the rate of illegal emigration is currently in decline owing to the astronomical sums charged by smugglers even for the cheaper options. Such is the desperate state of personal finances in Lebanon that even a potentially deadly sea crossing is now beyond the means of many.




Lebanese families are risking their lives to escape. (AFP)

This is why some are reportedly opting to apply for a program called Talent Beyond Boundaries, which offers work visas for Palestinian youths seeking employment in other countries.

Lebanon was regarded by its citizens and foreign investors as a land of promise after the end of the civil war when the buzz of reconstruction replaced the rhetoric of sectarian slogans.

But these days, its citizens, as well as the people from neighboring states who found refugee in Lebanon, are looking abroad for opportunity and economic security. As a result the country is being deprived of the skilled young workers it will need to recover from the current crisis.

The general consensus is that until Lebanon’s political paralysis can be overcome and long-delayed economic reforms are implemented, the human tide is unlikely to stop. “It was a humiliation, day in, day out in Lebanon,” said Mejel. “I couldn’t take it anymore.”

 


Palestinian boy who lost nine siblings arrives in Italy for treatment

Updated 12 June 2025
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Palestinian boy who lost nine siblings arrives in Italy for treatment

  • According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) website, more than 15,000 children have reportedly been killed and over 34,000 injured in almost two years of war in Gaza

MILAN: A group of 17 Palestinian children, including an 11-year-old boy who lost nine siblings in an Israel strike in Gaza last month, arrived in Italy on Wednesday for hospital treatment, accompanied by more than 50 family members.
Adam Al-Najjar, who has multiple fractures, arrived with his mother at Milan’s Linate airport where he was welcomed by Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, before being transferred to the city’s Niguarda Hospital.
The plane that landed at Linate carried five other injured Palestinian minors, while 11 more arrived on flights to other Italian airports.
The May 23 attack left Adam in a serious condition at Nasser Hospital, one of the few operational medical facilities in southern Gaza.
Adam “is stable, has a head wound that is healing but his left arm is bad, the bones are fractured and the nerves damaged,” his 36-year-old mother, Alaa Al-Najjar, a paediatrician, told Italian newspaper la Repubblica.
Adam’s father, Hamdi Al-Najjar, who was also a doctor, died a week after the attack.
“The damage is in my left hand, there is a problem with the nerves, I can’t feel my fingers. There’s still a lot of pain,” Adam told Turkish news agency Anadolu.
A total of 70 Palestinians were set to arrive in Italy on three military aircraft that set off from Israel’s Eilat airport, the Italian foreign ministry said earlier on Wednesday.
The patients will be treated at hospitals in numerous cities including Milan, Rome, Florence and Bologna.
According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) website, more than 15,000 children have reportedly been killed and over 34,000 injured in almost two years of war in Gaza.
Including the latest operation, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government has so far brought 150 injured Palestinians from Gaza to Italy for treatment, the foreign ministry said.
The Italian government has been a staunch supporter of Israel since the Oct. 7, 2023 attack by Hamas-led militants that killed some 1,200 people and took about 250 hostages to Gaza, according to Israeli figures.
In recent months, Rome has criticized the extent of the Israeli response, and expressed concern as the death toll in Gaza has mounted, while declining to apply sanctions.
Italy was not among numerous European Union countries that called last month for a review of EU-Israeli economic and trade relations.

 


Israel to expel French nationals on Gaza aid boat by end of week

Updated 12 June 2025
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Israel to expel French nationals on Gaza aid boat by end of week

  • All 12 of them have been banned from Israel for 100 years
  • France and Saudi Arabia are co-hosting a UN meeting later this month in New York on steps toward recognizing a Palestinian state and reaching a so-called two-state solution to the conflict

JERUSALEM: Israel is to expel by the end of the week four French nationals held after security forces intercepted their Gaza-bound aid boat, France’s foreign minister said Wednesday, as an Israeli NGO said one of the French campaigners was briefly put in solitary confinement.
The announcement came as France’s prime minister accused activists aboard the boat — who hoped to raise awareness about the humanitarian situation in war-torn Gaza — of capitalizing on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for political attention.
The four, who include Rima Hassan, a member of European Parliament from the hard-left France Unbowed (LFI) party who is of Palestinian descent, will be deported on Thursday and Friday, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said on X.
They were among 12 people on board the Madleen sailboat which was carrying food and supplies for Gaza before it was intercepted by Israeli forces in international waters off the besieged Palestinian territory on Monday.
Four, including two French citizens and Swedish campaigner Greta Thunberg, agreed to be deported immediately.
The remaining eight were taken into custody after they refused to leave Israel voluntarily, according to Adalah, an Israeli rights NGO representing most of the activists.
All 12 of them have been banned from Israel for 100 years.
Adalah said on Wednesday that Israeli authorities had placed French MEP Hassan and Brazilian activist Thiago Avila in solitary confinement, with Hassan later removed.

“Israeli authorities transferred two of the volunteers — the Brazilian volunteer Thiago Avila and the French-Palestinian European Parliament member Rima Hassan — to separate prison facilities, away from the others, and placed them in solitary confinement,” Adalah said in a statement.
The NGO later said that Hassan had been moved back to Givon prison in Ramla, near Tel Aviv, while Avila remained in isolation.
When asked for comment, Israel’s prison authority referred AFP to the foreign ministry, which said it was checking the reports.
Adalah said Hassan was put in isolation after writing “Free Palestine” on a prison wall.
The NGO said Brazilian activist Avila was placed in isolation “due to his ongoing hunger and thirst strike, which he began two days ago.”
“He has also been treated aggressively by prison authorities, although this has not escalated to physical assault,” it added.
The leader of Hassan’s LFI party in parliament, Mathilde Panot, said France’s prime minister Francois Bayrou had failed to condemn Israel’s actions.
The party’s boss, Jean-Luc Melenchon, accused Bayrou of “abandoning the French prisoners,” and called on President Emmanuel Macron to step in.
“These activists obtained the effect they wanted, but it’s a form of instrumentalization to which we should not lend ourselves,” Bayrou responded in the National Assembly.
It’s “through diplomatic action, and efforts to bring together several states to pressure the Israeli government, that we can obtain the only possible solution” to the conflict, he added.
Foreign Minister Barrot also rejected Panot’s criticism, saying “the admirable mobilization” of French officials had made a rapid resolution of the situation possible “despite the harassment and defamation that they have been subjected to.”

France and Saudi Arabia are co-hosting a UN meeting later this month in New York on steps toward recognizing a Palestinian state and reaching a so-called two-state solution to the conflict.
Israel is facing mounting pressure to allow more humanitarian aid into Gaza, whose entire population the United Nations has warned is at risk of famine.
Israel’s defense minister Israel Katz on Wednesday called on Egypt to block a hundreds-strong pro-Palestinian activist convoy from reaching Gaza, as the group arrived in the Libyan capital of Tripoli.
Palestinian militant group Hamas on October 7, 2023 attacked Israel, resulting in the deaths of 1,219 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official figures.
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says the retaliatory Israeli military offensive has killed at least 55,104 people, the majority civilians. The United Nations considers these figures to be reliable.
Out of 251 taken hostage during the Hamas attack, 54 are still held in Gaza including 32 the Israeli military says are dead.

 


Israel says bodies of two hostages retrieved from Gaza

Updated 11 June 2025
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Israel says bodies of two hostages retrieved from Gaza

  • Yair Yaakov was seized in the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack on Israel and killed the same day

JERUSALEM: Israeli forces have retrieved the bodies of two hostages from the Gaza Strip, the military said Wednesday, as Israel presses its offensive in the Palestinian territory.
A military statement said a joint operation by the army and the Shin Bet security agency recovered the bodies of Yair Yaakov and “an additional hostage whose name has not yet been cleared for publication” from the Khan Yunis area of southern Gaza.
Yaakov, a member of Kibbutz Nir Oz, was 59 when he was seized in the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack on Israel and killed the same day.
The military statement said he had been abducted and killed by fighters from Islamic Jihad, a Hamas ally.
Yaakov was abducted along with his partner Meirav Tal, as they sheltered in their safe room in Nir Oz.
She was freed on November 28, 2023 during the first truce.
Abducted separately at the home of their mother, Yair’s two children Yagil and Or were also released on November 27 during the first truce.
Nir Oz was one of the communities hit hardest by the attack, with nearly a quarter of its residents killed or taken hostage.


Milei says Argentina to move Israel embassy to Jerusalem in 2026

Argentine President Javier Milei attends a Plenum session of the Knesset, Israel’s Parliament, in Jerusalem. (Reuters)
Updated 11 June 2025
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Milei says Argentina to move Israel embassy to Jerusalem in 2026

  • “I am proud to announce before you that in 2026 we will make effective the move of our embassy to the city of west Jerusalem,” Milei told Israeli parliament Wednesday

JERUSALEM: Argentine President Javier Milei said Wednesday his country would move its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, the status of which is one of the most delicate issues in the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
“I am proud to announce before you that in 2026 we will make effective the move of our embassy to the city of west Jerusalem,” Milei said in a speech in the Israeli parliament during an official state visit.
Argentina’s embassy is currently located near the coastal city of Tel Aviv.
Several countries, including the United States, Paraguay, Guatemala and Kosovo, have moved their embassies to Jerusalem, breaking with international consensus.
Israel has occupied east Jerusalem since 1967, later annexing it in a move not recognized by the international community.
Israel treats the city as its capital, while Palestinians want east Jerusalem to become the capital of a future state.
Most foreign embassies to Israel are located in the coastal hub city of Tel Aviv in order to avoid interfering with negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians.
In 2017, during his first term as US president, Donald Trump unilaterally recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, sparking Palestinian anger and the international community’s disapproval.
The United States transferred its embassy to Jerusalem in May 2018.


Syrian, Egyptian foreign ministers hold talks at Oslo Forum

Updated 11 June 2025
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Syrian, Egyptian foreign ministers hold talks at Oslo Forum

  • Lawmakers exchange views on challenges to regional security

LONDON: The foreign ministers of the Syrian Arab Republic and Egypt held talks on Wednesday on the sidelines of the Oslo Forum 2025 in Norway.

Asaad al-Shaibani and Badr Abdelatty discussed ways to improve collaboration between their countries and exchanged views on the challenges to security and stability in the region, the Syrian Arab News Agency reported.

Saudi Minister of Foreign Affairs Prince Faisal bin Farhan also met Abdelatty on the sidelines of the forum to discuss bilateral relations and the escalating situation in the Gaza Strip and occupied West Bank.

The Oslo Forum is an annual event organized by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in collaboration with the Center for Humanitarian Dialogue in Switzerland. It provides a platform for global leaders, decision-makers and conflict mediators to share their experiences and discuss pathways to peace.