Exodus: the desperate rush to get out of Lebanon

Refugee crises are nothing new in the Middle East, wrote Nicholas R. Micinski and Kelsey Norman on The Conversation (Melbourne). The creation of the State of Israel in 1948 brought about “the world’s longest-standing refugee situation”: six million Palestinians spread across the Levant. The first Gulf War and the 2003 US invasion of Iraq left millions displaced, as did Israel’s 2006 war with Hezbollah, and subsequent conflicts in Syria, Libya and Yemen. But the current exodus from Lebanon has plunged the region into an unprecedented crisis. In the weeks since Israel launched its full-scale invasion and bombardment, 1.2 million people (a fifth of Lebanon’s population) have been displaced – adding to the two million Gazans displaced since last October.

Lebanon was already on its knees before this conflict escalated, said Vivian Yee in The New York Times. It had endured years of unstable government, largely owing to the insidious role played in its politics by Hezbollah, the Shia militia that doubles as a political party. It hasn’t had a president for two years – it’s now run by a weak caretaker regime – and the crippling economic crisis that took hold in 2019 has left millions impoverished. And after Israel’s onslaught began last month, those same people are doing all they can just to survive, said The National (Abu Dhabi). Many have holed up in schools, hotels and nightclubs designated as shelters by the Lebanese government. But huge numbers are fleeing the country. A fortunate minority have stumped up $1,800 for one-way tickets on charter yachts to Cyprus; about 6,000 have taken the bold step of fleeing to Iraq.