BEIRUT: Fears of an escalation in the simmering conflict between Hezbollah and Israel have prompted some airlines to cancel flights to Lebanon, but business appeared to be proceeding as usual Tuesday at the Beirut airport, where many travelers greeted the warnings with a shrug.
Hadi Sharqawi, 24, a Lebanese student in Italy, arrived Tuesday after two days of flight cancelations, to spend a month and a half with his family as he normally does in the summer. He is from the town of Kharayeb, which is in southern Lebanon although relatively far from the border where clashes have been ongoing for 10 months.
“As far as the threats, they didn’t influence me at all to not come to Lebanon,” Sharqawi said. “Even if there are threats, we will still come.”
Seventy-one-year-old Mohammad Mokhaled, from the southern town of Jarjouh, who was waiting to pick up his daughter Tuesday, agreed.
“We are not scared of the situation, because we are used to this,” he said. “We hear airstrikes regularly and the breaking of the sound barrier, and it doesn’t affect us.”
Lebanon is bracing for a retaliatory strike from Israel after a missile hit a soccer field in the town of Majdal Shams in the Israeli-annexed Syrian Golan over the weekend, killing 12 children and adolescents. Israel accused the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah of carrying out the strike, to which Hezbollah issued a rare denial.
Even before the deadly incident, rhetoric and fears of a full-blown conflict had been intensifying, but it has had relatively little impact on the summer tourist season, during which tens of thousands of Lebanese working or studying abroad typically come to visit their families, filling up restaurants and beach clubs.
Israel and the Lebanese militant group have traded near-daily strikes since the war in Gaza erupted on Oct.7 following Hamas’ surprise attack on southern Israel.
The Beirut airport reported that 406,396 passengers arrived in June compared to 427,854 arrivals in the same period in 2023, a decrease of 5 percent. It also recorded 300,362 departed the country in June, compared to 280,366, an increase of 7 percent.
Amal Ahmadieh, 23, was leaving Tuesday to return to Qatar, where she works in a restaurant, after a vacation in Lebanon. Ahmadieh said she was leaving as originally scheduled and had not pushed up her flight due to security concerns.
“Honestly everyone was telling me that the situation was not good but I wanted to come to see my friends and my family,” she said. “Whatever happens, at the end of the day, this is my country.”
Some European airlines have canceled flights in light of the increased tensions. Frankfurt-based Lufthansa Group said Monday that three of its airlines — Lufthansa, Swiss and Eurowings — decided to suspend flights to and from Beirut “up to and including” August 5. Air France also suspended some of its flights, while other airlines changed their flight schedules.
Lebanon’s Middle East Airlines delayed some flights to arrive Tuesday morning instead of at night, the carrier said, “due to technical reasons related to the distribution of insurance risks.”
MEA chief Mohamad El-Hout, however, downplayed fears. Following a meeting Tuesday with caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati, the state-run National News Agency said Hout had “denied that Rafik Hariri Airport had received any threats or information from any source that the airport would be attacked.”
He pointed out that Lufthansa Group had also canceled flights to Lebanon in the early months of the war in Gaza and border conflict in Lebanon, “and nothing happened then.”
What happened in Majdal Shams has kicked off a flurry of diplomatic efforts to prevent the situation from spiraling.
A Western diplomat whose country is involved in those efforts said that he anticipates Israel will keep its retaliation within boundaries that would not lead to an all-out war — similar to the exchange of strikes between Iran and Israel after Israel struck an Iranian consular building in Syria. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.
“It’s clear that they (Israel) want to take a stance but without leading to a generalized conflict,” he said. “It’s sure that there will be a retaliation. It will be symbolic. It may be spectacular, but it will not be a reason for both parties to engage in a general escalation.”
Despite escalating tension between Israel and Hezbollah, it’s business as usual at Beirut airport
https://arab.news/p2tt8
Despite escalating tension between Israel and Hezbollah, it’s business as usual at Beirut airport
- “As far as the threats, they didn’t influence me at all to not come to Lebanon,” Sharqawi said. “Even if there are threats, we will still come”
- Even before the deadly incident, rhetoric and fears of a full-blown conflict had been intensifying, but it has had relatively little impact on the summer tourist season
France says forced displacement of Gazans would be ‘unacceptable’
- “Any forced displacement of the population in Gaza would be unacceptable,” a French foreign ministry spokesman said
- “It would not only be a serious violation of international law, but also a major hindrance to the two-state solution”
PARIS: France on Tuesday said any forced displacement of Gazans would be “unacceptable” after US President Donald Trump proposed moving Gaza Palestinians to Egypt and Jordan.
“Any forced displacement of the population in Gaza would be unacceptable,” a French foreign ministry spokesman said when asked about Trump’s comments.
“It would not only be a serious violation of international law, but also a major hindrance to the two-state solution,” the spokesman said, referring to calls for Israeli and Palestinian states living side-by-side.
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It would also be a “destabilization factor (for) our close allies Egypt and Jordan.”
Almost all of the Gaza Strip’s 2.4 million inhabitants have been displaced by the war that began with Palestinian militant group Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.
But a fragile ceasefire that came into force this month could boost permanent peace efforts.
Trump on Monday expressed his desire to move Palestinians from Gaza to “safer” locations such as Egypt or Jordan.
Trump had on Saturday floated the idea to “clean out” Gaza after the conflict, which he said had reduced the Palestinian territory to a “demolition site.”
After jointly mediating the ceasefire with the United States and Egypt, Qatar on Tuesday said the two-state solution was “the only path forward.”
Egypt and Palestinian Authority president Mahmud Abbas have also strongly opposed Trump’s proposal.
Crew abandon HK-flagged container ship in Red Sea after fire, sources say
- The crew were rescued by another vessel and are safe, the sources said
- The incident took place in the open sea off Yemen
LONDON/ATHENS: The crew of the Hong Kong-flagged ASL Bauhinia have abandoned the container ship in the Red Sea after it caught fire on Tuesday, two maritime sources said, adding the cause of the incident was not immediately clear.
The crew were rescued by another vessel and are safe, the sources said, adding that the incident took place in the open sea off Yemen.
The Shanghai-based manager of ASL Bauhinia, Asean Seas Line, was not immediately available for comment.
Earlier this month, Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi militia said the group would limit their attacks on commercial vessels sailing through the Red Sea to Israel-linked ships provided the Gaza ceasefire is fully implemented.
Commercial ship owners, insurers and retailer remain cautious over the Houthis’ announcement with current traffic through the Red Sea and Suez Canal dominated by Chinese and Russian linked vessels, which have been seen as lower risk.
Since the Houthis began attacks on shipping in sympathy with the Palestinians in Gaza, most vessels have diverted to the longer east-west route via the southern tip of Africa.
Qatar reiterates support for two-state solution
- “Our position has always been clear to the necessity of the Palestinian people receiving their rights, and that the two-state solution is the only path forward,” Ansari said
DOHA: Qatar reaffirmed its support for a two-state solution on Tuesday after US President Donald Trump repeated his call to move Palestinians from Gaza to Egypt or Jordan.
Foreign ministry spokesman Majed Al-Ansari did not reveal details of conversations with US officials, but said Qatar often didn’t see “eye to eye” with its allies.
“Our position has always been clear to the necessity of the Palestinian people receiving their rights, and that the two-state solution is the only path forward,” Ansari told a regular media briefing when asked about Trump’s comments.
“We don’t see eye to eye on a lot of things with all our allies, not only the United States, but we work very closely with them to make sure that we formulate policy together,” he added.
Qatar, the US and Egypt jointly mediated the Gaza ceasefire and hostage-release deal that went into effect a little over a week ago, halting more than 15 months of fighting sparked by Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
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On Monday, Trump repeated his wish to move Gazans to another country, after earlier saying he wanted to “clean out” the devastated Palestinian territory.
The US president told reporters he would “like to get them living in an area where they can live without disruption and revolution and violence so much.”
Ansari said Qatar, which hosts the region’s biggest US military base, was “engaging fully with the Trump administration and with envoy (Steve) Witkoff,” the president’s special representative for the Middle East.
“I’m not going to comment on the type of discussions we are having with them right now, but I would say that it is very productive,” Ansari said.
“We have been working very closely with the Trump administration over the regional issues as a whole, including the Palestinian issue.”
Turkiye says it killed 15 Kurdish militants in Syria and Iraq
ISTANBUL: Turkiye said on Wednesday it had killed 13 Kurdish militants in northern Syria and two in Iraq, a sign that Ankara has pressed on with its campaign against fighters, some with possible links to US allies, since Donald Trump took office in the White House last week.
The Turkish defense ministry said the Kurdish fighters it had “neutralized” in Syria belonged to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia.
Turkiye considers the PKK and YPG to be identical; the United States considers them separate groups, having banned the PKK as terrorists but recruited the YPG as its main allies in Syria in the campaign against Islamic State.
Turkiye has long called on Washington to withdraw support for the YPG, and has expressed hope that Trump would revise the policy inherited from the previous administration of President Joe Biden.
Tuesday’s report of major clashes was the second within days: Turkiye also reported having killed 13 Kurdish militants on Sunday.
Turkish forces and their allies in Syria have repeatedly fought with Kurdish militants there since the toppling of Syrian President Bashar Assad last month.
Turkiye has said that the Syrian Democratic Forces, a US-backed umbrella group that includes the Kurdish YPG, must disarm or face a military intervention.
Under the Biden administration the United States has had 2,000 troops in Syria fighting alongside the SDF and YPG.
Israeli, US strike on Iran nuclear program would be ‘crazy’: FM
- Abbas Araghchi: Such an attack ‘would be faced with an immediate and decisive response’
- ‘Lots of things should be done’ by Washington to bring Tehran to negotiating table
LONDON: Israel and the US would be “crazy” to strike Iran’s nuclear program, the latter’s foreign minister has said.
“We’ve made it clear that any attack to our nuclear facilities would be faced with an immediate and decisive response,” Abbas Araghchi told Sky News in his first interview since the inauguration of US President Donald Trump.
“I don’t think they’ll do that crazy thing. This is really crazy. And this would turn the whole region into a very bad disaster.”
In the interview, Araghchi addressed concerns over his country’s nuclear program. Trump’s first term as president saw the US pull out of the Iran nuclear deal, which had eased sanctions on Tehran in exchange for limited uranium enrichment.
Iran claims that its nuclear program is for civilian purposes, but its return to high levels of enrichment in recent years has alarmed Western governments.
Trump has said he prefers a diplomatic solution, and a new deal with Iran would be “nice.” But Araghchi said credible US guarantees would need to be provided to Iran for negotiations to begin.
“The situation is different and much more difficult than the previous time,” he added. “Lots of things should be done by the other side to buy our confidence … We haven’t heard anything but the ‘nice’ word, and this is obviously not enough.”
