BEIRUT: Hundreds of thousands of Syrians refugees have returned to their country since Israel launched a massive aerial bombardment on wide swathes of Lebanon in September. Many who fled to Lebanon after the war in Syria started in 2011 did not want to go back.
But for officials in Lebanon, the influx of returnees comes as a silver lining to the war between Israel and Hezbollah that has killed more than 3,000 people and displaced some 1.2 million in Lebanon. Some in Syria hope the returning refugees could lead to more international assistance and relief from western sanctions.
’I wasn’t thinking at all about returning’
Nisreen Al-Abed returned to her northwest Syrian hometown in October after 12 years as a refugee in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley. The airstrikes had been terrifying, but what really worried her was that her 8-year-old twin daughters need regular transfusions to treat a rare blood disorder, thalassemia.
“I was afraid that in Lebanon, in this situation, I wouldn’t be able to get blood for them,” Al-Abed said.
During their dayslong journey, Al-Abed and her daughters were smuggled from government-held to opposition-held territory before reaching her parent’ house. Her husband remained in Lebanon.
“Before these events, I wasn’t thinking at all about returning to Syria,” she said.
According to the UN refugee agency, more than 470,000 people — around 70 percent of them Syrian — have crossed the border since the escalation in Lebanon began in mid-September. Lebanon’s General Security agency estimates more than 550,000 people have fled, most of them Syrian.
Most of the returnees are in government-controlled areas of Syria, according to UNHCR, while tens of thousands have made their way to the Kurdish-controlled northeast and smaller numbers to the opposition-controlled northwest.
Political leaders in Lebanon, which was hosting an estimated 1.5 million Syrian refugees before the recent wave of returns, have been calling for years for the displaced to go home, and many don’t want the refugees to return.
Lebanon’s caretaker Minister of Social Affairs Hector Hajjar told Russia’s Sputnik News last month that the war in Lebanon could yield “a positive benefit, an opportunity to return a large number of displaced Syrians to their country, because the situation there is now better than here.”
A political opening for Syria?
Officials in Damascus point to increasing economic pressure from the masses fleeing Lebanon as an argument for loosening western sanctions on President Bashar Assad’s government.
Syria was already suffering from spiraling inflation, and the sudden influx of refugees has driven prices up even more, as have Israeli strikes on border crossings that have slowed legal cross-border trade and smuggling.
“Everyone knows that Syria is suffering from difficult economic conditions: hyperinflation, import inflation, and an economic blockade,” said Abdul-Qader Azzouz, an economic analyst and professor at Damascus University. The influx of refugees just “increases the economic burden,” he said.
Alaa Al-Sheikh, a member of the executive bureau in Damascus province, urged the US to lift sanctions on Syria because of the huge number of arrivals.
“The burden is big and we are in pressing need of international assistance,” she said.
Rights groups have raised concerns about the treatment of returning refugees. The Jordan-based Syrian think tank ETANA estimates at least 130 people were “arbitrarily arrested at official border crossings or checkpoints inside Syria, either because they were wanted for security reasons or military service,” despite a government-declared amnesty for men who dodged the draft.
Joseph Daher, a Swiss-Syrian researcher and professor at the European University Institute in Florence, noted the number of arrests is small and that Assad’s government might not view the returnees as a threat because they are mostly women and children.
Still, Daher labeled government attempts to show the returning refugees are welcome as “propaganda,” saying, “they’re unwilling and not ready in terms of economics or politics to do it.”
UNHCR head Filippo Grandi said this week that his agency is working with the Syrian government “to ensure the safety and security of all those arriving,” and he urged donors to provide humanitarian aid and financial assistance to help Syria recover after 13 years of war.
A temporary return
UNHCR regional spokeswoman Rula Amin said if people leave the country where they are registered as refugees, they usually lose their protected status.
Whether and how that will be applied in the current situation remains unclear, Amin said, underscoring the exodus from Lebanon took place “under adverse circumstances, that is under duress.”
“Given the current situation, the procedure will need to be applied with necessary safeguards and humanity,” she said.
Jeff Crisp, a visiting research fellow at the University of Oxford’s Refugee Studies Center and a former UNHCR official, said he believes Syrians are entitled to continued international protection “because of the grave threats to their life and liberty in both countries.”
Some refugees have entered Syria via smuggler routes so their departure from Lebanon is not officially recorded, including Um Yaman, who left Beirut’s heavily bombarded southern suburbs with her children for the city of Raqqa in eastern Syria.
“When I went to Syria, to be honest, I went by smuggling, in case we wanted to go back to Lebanon later when things calm down, so our papers would remain in order in Lebanon,” she said. She asked to be identified only by her honorific (“mother of Yaman”) to be able to speak freely.
If the war in Lebanon ends, Um Yaman said, they may return, but “nothing is clear at all.”
While Syrian refugees don’t want to return, officials in Lebanon and Syria see exodus as opportunity
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While Syrian refugees don’t want to return, officials in Lebanon and Syria see exodus as opportunity
- According to the UN refugee agency, more than 470,000 people — around 70 percent of them Syrian — have crossed the border since the escalation in Lebanon began in mid-September
- Lebanon’s General Security agency estimates more than 550,000 people have fled, most of them Syrian
226 health workers killed in Lebanon since Oct. 7: WHO
- Abubakar said: “A hallmark of the conflict in Lebanon is how destructive it has been to health care,” highlighting that 47 percent of these attacks “have proven fatal to at least one health worker or patient”
GENEVA: Nearly 230 health workers have been killed in Lebanon since the start of Israel’s war in Gaza following the Oct. 7 attacks last year, the World Health Organization said.
In total, the UN health agency said there had been 187 attacks on health care in Lebanon in the more than 13 months of cross-border fire between Israel and Hezbollah over the Gaza conflict.
Between Oct. 7, 2023 and Nov.18 this year, “we have 226 deaths and 199 injuries in total,” Abdinasir Abubakar, the WHO representative in Lebanon, said via video link from Beirut.
He said “almost 70 percent” of these had occurred since the tensions escalated into an all-out war in September.
Saying this was “an extremely worrying pattern,” he stressed that “depriving civilians of access to lifesaving care and targeting health providers is a breach of international humanitarian law.”
Abubakar said: “A hallmark of the conflict in Lebanon is how destructive it has been to health care,” highlighting that 47 percent of these attacks “have proven fatal to at least one health worker or patient” — the highest percentage of any active conflict today.
By comparison, Abubakar said that only 13.3 percent of attacks on health care globally had fatal outcomes during the same period, pointing to data from a range of conflict situations, including Ukraine, Sudan, and the occupied Palestinian territory.
He suggested the high percentage of fatal attacks on health care in Lebanon might be because “more ambulances have been targeted.”
“And whenever the ambulance is targeted, actually, then you will have three, four or five paramedics ... killed.”
The conflict has dealt a harsh blow to overall health care in Lebanon, which was already reeling from a string of dire crises in recent years.
The WHO warned that 15 of Lebanon’s 153 hospitals have ceased operating or are only partially functioning.
Hanan Balkhy, WHO’s regional director for the eastern Mediterranean region, stressed that “attacks on health care of this scale cripple a health system when those whose lives depend on it need it the most.”
“Beyond the loss of life, the death of health workers is a loss of years of investment and a crucial resource to a fragile country going forward.”
Little hope in Gaza that arrest warrants will cool Israeli onslaught
- An Israeli strike hit the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya, one of three medical facilities barely operational in the area, injuring six medical staff, some critically, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement
GAZA: Gazans saw little hope on Friday that International Criminal Court arrest warrants for Israeli leaders would slow down the onslaught on the Palestinian territory, where medics said at least 21 people were killed in fresh Israeli military strikes.
In Gaza City in the north, an Israeli strike on a house in Shejaia killed eight people, medics said.
Three others were killed in a strike near a bakery, and a fisherman was killed as he set out to sea. In the central and southern areas, nine people were killed in three separate Israeli air strikes.
FASTFACT
Residents in the three besieged towns on Gaza’s northern edge — Jabalia, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun — said Israeli forces had blown up dozens of houses.
Meanwhile, Israeli forces deepened their incursion and bombardment of the northern edge of the enclave, their main offensive since early last month.
The military claims it aims to prevent Hamas fighters from waging attacks and regrouping there; residents say they fear the aim is to permanently depopulate a strip of territory as a buffer zone, which Israel denies.
Residents in the three besieged towns on the northern edge — Jabalia, Beit Lahiya, and Beit Hanoun — said Israeli forces had blown up dozens of houses.
An Israeli strike hit the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya, one of three medical facilities barely operational in the area, injuring six medical staff, some critically, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement.
“The strike also destroyed the hospital’s main generator and punctured the water tanks, leaving the hospital without oxygen or water, which threatens the lives of patients and staff inside the hospital,” it added.
It said 85 wounded people, including children and women, were inside, eight in the ICU.
Gazans saw the ICC’s decision to seek the arrest of Israeli leaders for suspected war crimes as international recognition of the enclave’s plight. But those queuing for bread at a bakery in the southern city of Khan Younis were doubtful it would have any impact.
“The decision will not be implemented because America protects Israel, and it can veto anything. Israel will not be held accountable,” said Saber Abu Ghali as he waited for his turn in the crowd.
Saeed Abu Youssef, 75, said that even if justice arrived, it would be decades late: “We have been hearing decisions for more than 76 years that have not been implemented and haven’t done anything for us.” Israel launched its assault on Gaza after militants stormed across the border fence, killed 1,200 people, and seized more than 250 hostages on Oct. 7, 2023.
Since then, nearly 44,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, much of which has been laid to waste.
The court’s prosecutors said there were reasonable grounds to believe Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant were criminally responsible for acts including murder, persecution, and starvation as a weapon of war, as part of a “widespread and systematic attack against the civilian population of Gaza.”
Israeli politicians from across the political spectrum have denounced the ICC arrest warrants as biased and based on false evidence, and Israel says the court has no jurisdiction over the war.
Hamas hailed the arrest warrants as a first step toward justice.
Efforts by Arab mediators backed by the US to conclude a ceasefire deal have stalled.
Hamas wants a deal that ends the war, while Netanyahu has vowed the war can end only once Hamas is eradicated.
Turkiye dismisses two opposition mayors over ‘terrorism’
- The mayors of Tunceli and Ovacik were each sentenced to six years and three months in prison this week for membership of the outlawed PKK
- Both were replaced by state-appointed administrators
ISTANBUL: Two opposition mayors in eastern Turkiye have been removed from office after being convicted of “terrorism” for belonging to a banned Kurdish militant group, the interior minister said on Friday.
The mayors of Tunceli and Ovacik were each sentenced to six years and three months in prison this week for membership of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has waged a guerilla insurgency against the Turkish state since 1984.
Both were replaced by state-appointed administrators, the interior ministry said in a statement, in the latest ousting of politicians associated with Turkiye’s Kurdish minority.
Tunceli’s deposed mayor Cevdet Konak, is a member of Turkiye’s main pro-Kurdish party.
The Peoples’ Equality and Democracy party is regularly targeted by the authorities which accuse it of having links to the PKK, which is classified as a terrorist group by Ankara and its Western allies.
Ovacik’s deposed mayor Mustafa Sarigul is affiliated with the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which came out on top in local elections held at the end of March.
Both Konak and Sarigul told local press on Thursday that the accusations against them were unfounded.
Angry protesters gathered Friday evening in front of Tunceli city hall, where some people tried to force their way through a police cordon, according to images published by several local media groups.
In late October and early November, the pro-Kurdish mayors of three towns in Turkiye’s Kurdish-majority southeast, as well the CHP mayor of Istanbul’s most populous district, were likewise dismissed on “terrorism” charges.
Their dismissals sparked protests and were condemned by the Council of Europe and human rights organizations.
Konak’s party condemned late Friday the dismissal of both mayors, saying that “the government is slowly destroying the will of the people.”
Meanwhile, CHP party leader Ozgur Ozel denounced the “theft of the will of the nation.”
4 Italian UN peacekeepers injured by rocket attack in Lebanon
- Israeli forces continue to pound targets in southern Lebanon and suburbs of Beirut
- Paramedics and health facilities among those attacked; women and infants among dead as searches for victims buried in rubble continue
BEIRUT: At least five medical workers were reported dead on Friday as Israeli forces continued to pound targets in southern Lebanon and the outskirts of Beirut.
The attacks intensified after US envoy Amos Hochstein left Tel Aviv on Thursday evening and returned to Washington after discussions with Israeli authorities. This followed his talks with Lebanese officials on Tuesday and Wednesday about a proposed diplomatic solution to the conflict in Lebanon between the Israeli army and Hezbollah, which marked its 52nd day on Friday. Hochstein did not disclose the outcome of the discussions.
On Friday, the UN Interim Force in Lebanon’s Italian unit reported that four of its soldiers were injured when two rockets struck their headquarters in the western sector, in Shamaa. Tasked with monitoring the Blue Line that separates Lebanon from Israel, UNIFIL’s 10,000 peacekeepers have repeatedly come under fire during the conflict.
Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, expressed her “deep indignation and concern” over “new attacks suffered by the Italian headquarters of UNIFIL in southern Lebanon.” She said “these attacks are unacceptable” and called on “the parties on the ground to guarantee, at all times, the safety of UNIFIL soldiers and to collaborate to identify those responsible quickly.”
UNIFIL said “two 122 mm rockets struck the Sector West headquarters” in Shamaa, about 5 kilometers from the Israeli border. The area has been a battleground for about a week. The injuries to the peacekeepers were not life-threatening and they were receiving treatment at the base’s hospital.
“UNIFIL strongly urges combating parties to avoid fighting next to its positions,” the force added.
Hezbollah said its fighters targeted Israeli troops in Shamaa with a salvo of rockets to prevent them from occupying the area. Israeli forces had advanced into the area over the previous two days and attempted further incursions toward the coastal town of Bayada, between Naqoura and Tyre.
Italy’s defense minister, Guido Crosetto, said he had contacted his Lebanese counterpart “reiterating that the Italian contingent of UNIFIL remains in southern Lebanon to offer a window of opportunity for peace, and cannot become hostage to attacks by militias.”
Also on Friday, the Israeli army carried out airstrikes on Beirut’s suburbs, targeting buildings in Ain Al-Remmaneh, a predominantly Christian area adjacent to Chiyah.
Israeli forces also continued their attempts to advance into southern towns. A force entered Deir Mimas, beyond the border town of Kfarkela, where it ordered eight families still residing there to remain in their homes.
Deir Mimas is in the Marjayoun district of Nabatiyeh Governorate, about 90 kilometers from Beirut. Its mayor, George Nakad, confirmed “the incursion” and said soldiers had entered it from Kfarkela, through olive fields.
Photos circulating on social media appeared to show Israeli tanks crossing the Litani road at the Qlayaa-Deir Mimas-Burj Al-Molouk triangle, supported by aerial cover and airstrikes on southern regions.
Elsewhere, Hezbollah said it targeted an Israeli Merkava tank with a guided missile south of the town of Khiam, which the Israeli army entered on Thursday. The tank was destroyed and its crew killed or injured, it added.
Israel on Friday intensified its reconnaissance flights over Lebanese regions exposed to airstrikes. Before 7 a.m., Israeli evacuation warnings circulated on social media ahead of strikes on parts of Hadath, Haret Hreik and Kafaat in the southern suburbs of Beirut.
About 30 minutes later, airstrikes hit residential buildings, one of which was located near the Lebanese University campus. Thick black smoke blanketed the area and the smell of gunpowder and other substances spread through neighborhoods, with reports of breathing problems and eye irritation.
Less than four hours later, Israeli forces issued a warning to residents of the Chiyah and Ain Al-Remaneh areas, and then targeted two residential buildings that also housed a medical laboratory, a gym, hair salons, beauty clinics, and clothes and fishing-tackle shops. One building was destroyed, the other cut in half.
The Israeli warnings sparked mass hysteria and displacement of the local population in Ain Al-Remaneh. Residents of Chiyah joined the exodus. Clashes were reported among the crowds after some blamed Hezbollah for the conflict. Six Israeli raids on the areas had taken place as of noon on Friday. The previous day, parts of the southern suburbs were hit intermittently by more than 10 Israeli air attacks.
In southern Lebanon, meanwhile, Israeli forces once again targeted ambulances belonging to Hezbollah’s Islamic Health Organization, which they said were were being used to “transport militants or weapons.” An attack on one of the organization’s ambulances at Deir Qanun junction, Ras Al-Ain, killed the paramedics inside.
The Lebanese Ministry of Health said Israel forces were targeting paramedics and medical facilities in the south in violation of international laws and norms and humanitarian laws.
Israel also targeted villages in the deep south, including Ghaziyeh and areas in the vicinity of Sidon, with heavy attacks that reportedly resulted in casualties and great destruction.
Meanwhile, search operations continued to find bodies under the rubble of houses and other buildings damaged or destroyed by Israeli attacks. Raids on southern villages, including Kafr Rumman, have resulted in seven confirmed deaths and one injury.
Four bodies were found under the rubble in Arabsalim. In Bekaa, several members of one family, including women and children, were killed by Israeli attacks on the village of Flawiye on Thursday. One person was reported missing. Eleven people from several families, including infants, were killed in attacks on Nabha.
Attacks on targets in northern Bekaa reached a peak on Thursday night, with 18 raids that killed 17 people in Baalbek, Maqneh, Younine, Beit Mchik, Brital and Hosh Al-Rafika.
Lebanese residents in areas stretching from Beirut to the Bekaa Valley and northern regions were alarmed on Friday morning by suspicious calls urging them to evacuate their homes. The calls sparked panic for a second consecutive day among people in several areas, including hotel guests in Beirut's Raouche district, residents of villages in Zgharta, and people in the village of Bebnine in Akkar, in the far north of the country
Others who received calls included residents of Beirut and its northern and eastern suburbs, including Furn El-Chebbak, Dekwaneh, Mar Roukoz, Burj Abi Haidar, Basta, Ras El-Nabeh, Bchamoun, Choueifat, and as far as Jbeil.
Hezbollah on Friday reaffirmed its ability to maintain its attacking threat and said it had targeted several locations in northern Israel. They included the settlement of Kiryat Shmona, the Haifa technical base about 35 kilometers from the border, and an Israeli early-warning and intelligence center linked to the 210th Golan Division on the summit of Mount Hermon in the occupied Syrian Golan. The Dovev barracks and a gathering of Israeli forces in the Manara settlement were also attacked.
Across Lebanon on Friday, national flags were raised at official institutions to mark the 81st anniversary of the country’s independence. In hundreds of shelters, children from displaced families sang the Lebanese national anthem, and some young people symbolically hoisted flags over the rubble in areas ravaged by recent attacks.
The speaker of the Lebanese parliament, Nabih Berri, described this year’s anniversary of independence as “a somber occasion, yet a reminder of the daily challenge to persevere, to uphold national unity, and to protect every inch of our homeland — south, north, east and sea — without surrender or despair.”
UN warns some who fled to Syria risking lives to return to Lebanon
- Gonzalo Vargas Llosa, the UN refugee agency’s representative in Syria, said: “These are very, very small numbers, but for us, even small numbers are worrying signals“
- The UNHCR estimates that around 560,000 people have fled into Syria from neighboring Lebanon since late September
GENEVA: The UN voiced concern Friday that conditions were so dire in Syria that some Lebanese residents who had fled there seeking refuge from the Israel-Hezbollah war were opting to return to Lebanon.
There are “Lebanese families who are beginning to take the very difficult and potentially life-threatening decision to return to Lebanon,” said Gonzalo Vargas Llosa, the United Nations refugee agency’s representative in Syria.
“These are very, very small numbers, but for us, even small numbers are worrying signals,” he told reporters in Geneva via video link from the Syrian-Lebanese border.
The UNHCR estimates that around 560,000 people have fled into Syria from neighboring Lebanon since late September, when months of cross-border fire between Israel and Hezbollah over the war in Gaza escalated into all-out war.
Lebanese authorities put the number even higher, at more than 610,000.
Vargas Llosa said that around 65 percent of those crossing into Syria — itself torn apart by 13 years of civil war — were Syrian nationals who had sought refuge in Lebanon from that conflict.
He pointed out that from 2017 up to September 23 this year, around 400,000 Syrians had returned to their country from Lebanon.
“We have had more or less the same number... in a period of seven to eight weeks,” he said, adding that some 150,000 Lebanese had also arrived in Syria during that period.
He hailed the “exemplary” and “extraordinary display of generosity” shown toward those arriving by communities across Syria, “whose infrastructure is destroyed, whose economy is destroyed.”
But he warned that given Syria’s own “catastrophic economic situation... it is unclear for how long this generosity will last.”
Worrying signs were already emerging, he said, pointing to the admittedly small numbers of people who were opting to return to Lebanon despite the risks.
UNHCR said that “on average up to 50 Lebanese individuals per day” were crossing back into Lebanon.
They were leaving because they thought “the conditions in Syria are appalling, and that they may be better off in Lebanon, in spite of the bombings,” Vargas Llosa said.
Back in Lebanon, they might have better support systems, easier access to services and even the ability to generate a little income, he said.
He warned that “unless there is a real injection of international support... this number of Lebanese choosing to return home to these extraordinarily difficult circumstances may grow in the coming weeks and months.”
“This would be extremely worrying.”
There were even some Syrian returnees who were opting to once again cross back into Lebanon, “primarily because of the extraordinarily dire economic conditions here in Syria,” Vargas Llosa said.
In the meantime, he said that there had recently been “an important decrease in the pace of arrivals” into Syria, from a peak of 10,000-15,000 per day to an average now of about 2,000.
Vargas Llosa charged that this was likely linked to Israel’s repeated bombings of border crossings.
“Syrians and Lebanese are very scared of using these escape routes,” he said, appealing to the Israeli military to “immediately stop these unacceptable attacks.”
