As bombing intensifies around Beirut, only a tiny fraction of the 86,000 Americans and green card holders who reside in Lebanon have been evacuated with U.S. help.
The State Department says it’s made some 5,000 seats available on both commercial and chartered flights for U.S. citizens, but there’s a catch: they have to get to the airport amid regular bombings on their own, and many may have to leave family behind.
That’s what’s led to only around a quarter of those seats being filled by 1,100 U.S. citizens, legal permanent residents and family members flying out across 10 U.S.-organized flights, according to advocates.
Since July, the U.S. has had a level 4 “do not travel” advisory for Lebanon encouraging citizens to get out.
On Sept. 27, the State Department said it would not be evacuating Americans, prompting airlines to charge exorbitant prices – between $5,000 and $8,000 per seat. The department then back peddled and said it would help organize flights at reasonable rates.
Some 8,500 U.S. citizens have reached out to the U.S. embassy in Beirut for information and assistance in evacuating.
“We’re going to continue the flights for the time being because we do assess that there is demand,” said State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller. “We believe we have a duty to do everything we can to help American citizens get out of the country.”
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But human rights attorney Maria Kari says those efforts are futile without a noncombatant evacuation operation (NEO) to bring in U.S. forces to get Americans out.
“The writing was on the wall several months ago that the situation in Lebanon was going to start disintegrating,” she told Fox News Digital.
Kari said many of the U.S. citizens and green card holders in Lebanon she works with have family members who do not hold U.S. passports and refuse to leave the region without a parent or a child.
“The Beirut embassy has made it very clear they’re not processing any new visa applications,” she said.
Kari said the U.S. needs to extend the same protections it did to Israeli Americans who were looking to escape the region after Oct. 7 – allow immediate family members of U.S. citizens to get visas.
To the State Department, she said: “You’re not talking about how you’re contributing to the problem of why these flights are not filling up. You’re not talking about how it’s not safe to get to the airport, key sites around the airport, including the road and the residential building by the airport, were bombed in the last few days, right?”
The only international airport in Beirut is less than three miles from where Hezbollah is headquartered.
When citizens contact the embassy, they get a response similar to the one shared with Fox News Digital: “We are only assisting U.S. citizens currently in Lebanon and their immediate family members who have a valid U.S. or Schengen visa at this time. A valid visa is required to enter the United States. Lebanese passport holders can travel to Türkiye without a visa.”
“It’s absolutely absurd that the U.S. thinks it’s OK to take out Americans and their non-American relatives and drop them off in Turkey – a foreign government not responsible for Americans or Lebanese citizens,” she said. “Just another example of this administration’s failure to protect Americans, first in Gaza and now in Lebanon.”
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On Oct. 19, 2023, the U.S. government created a Visa Waiver Program for family members of Israeli Americans who looked to flee with their loved ones as war broke out.
“We did the right thing there. We have failed consistently to do the right thing for another class of American citizens and their relatives,” said Kari.
The security situation in Lebanon is rapidly deteriorating amid Israel’s ground incursion to the home of Hezbollah, but the Biden administration has not yet determined it necessary to declare a noncombatant evacuation to bring in U.S. forces to get Americans out.
It calls to mind Israel’s 2006 incursion into Lebanon, when the U.S. brought in service members to secure safe passage out of Lebanon for some 15,000 U.S. citizens. That time, the IDF bombed Beirut’s international airport and its roadways.
“The airport is open, but it’s not open indefinitely. Israel did strike directly at the airport last time. I’m sure that they’re under pressure not to this time, but the pressure is no longer really working for the White House right now,” said Zev Faintuch, head of research and intelligence at international security firm Global Guardian.
Some 2,000 have been killed in Israeli attacks on the country, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry. It’s not clear how many of those were Hezbollah militants, but the figure includes 127 children and 261 women.
The fighting has sent some 1.2 million – roughly a quarter of the country’s population – fleeing.
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The Israeli military said it hit about 185 Hezbollah targets on Tuesday, as Lebanon reported dozens of people killed in Israeli airstrikes.
On Wednesday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it struck southern suburbs in Beirut to target a “weapons productions facility and a Hezbollah intelligence headquarters.”
Israeli airstrikes killed Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, and now his successor, too, according to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.