As war looms and flights dwindle, Lebanese grapple with whether to flee

BEIRUT - Vacations cut short, hurried goodbyes and last-minute flights at exorbitant fares — residents and tourists, heeding warnings of an impending war, are scrambling to leave summertime Lebanon as tensions build between Israel, Iran and Hezbollah, Tehran’s Lebanese ally.

Britain has ordered its citizens to “leave Lebanon now,” while Paris is urging French nationals to depart “as soon as possible.” The U.S. Embassy in Beirut, in an alert over the weekend, instructed Americans who wish to leave to “book any ticket available to them.”

At the Beirut airport, passengers waited for delayed flights or for seats to open up, tired children resting against luggage carts piled high with suitcases, their parents sipping coffee out of paper cups. As airlines such as Lufthansa, Air France and Royal Jordanian cancel flights to and from the country, ticket prices have skyrocketed, putting them out of reach for many Lebanese grappling with the effects of an economic crisis, including soaring inflation and a currency that has lost much of its value.

“The options are few and it’s very expensive, but for now, people are getting out,” said Samer Shamass, 55, the owner of a small travel agency in Beirut.

Passengers described having to make tough decisions about whether to leave, and then rushing to find flights, or having family members outside Lebanon pay for their tickets.

Mireille Malaket, 31, said by phone on Wednesday that she had scrambled to rebook her ticket home to Canada last week. “The whole situation changed really fast,” she said, adding that the atmosphere felt “tense” from the moment she arrived in Lebanon in early July. “I could have waited, but it would have been a risk.”

The exodus from Lebanon, a vibrant but crisis-ridden nation of about 5.3 million people, began last week after back-to-back assassinations targeted a senior Hezbollah commander near Beirut and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.

Israel said it “eliminated” the Hezbollah commander, Fuad Shukr, on July 30 as retaliation for a rocket strike days earlier that killed 12 children on a soccer field in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Hours later, on July 31, Haniyeh was also killed, in a blast while visiting Iran. Israel has not commented on Haniyeh’s killing, but U.S. officials were informed by Israel immediately afterward that it was responsible — and Iran has vowed revenge for the attack on its soil.

“After the assassination of Haniyeh, Iran finds itself obliged to respond. After the assassination of Fuad (Shukr), Hezbollah finds itself obliged to respond,” the Lebanese group’s leader, Hasan Nasrallah, said Tuesday in a live video address to supporters in Beirut.

Israel and Hezbollah, Lebanon’s most powerful political and military movement, have traded cross-border fire for months, in clashes that started soon after Hamas militants from the Gaza Strip attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, igniting a war. Since then, near-daily Israeli strikes have displaced close to 100,000 people from the border region in southern Lebanon, and have killed 114 civilians and noncombatants, according to a Washington Post tally.

In Israel, Hezbollah rocket and drone attacks have also forced 62,000 people from their homes in northern Israel and killed 23 civilians.

But Nasrallah on Tuesday signaled that this time was different, that the assassination of a senior commander near Beirut required a much stronger response. For months, he said, one part of Lebanon has served as the front line, with frequent casualties and funerals, while in another part of the country “it’s concerts and leisure, lunches and dinners, restaurants are full, hotels are full.”

“We did not escalate, even when our commanders were killed,” he said, but added that “no one can tell us, inside or outside Lebanon, to deal with (the) attack” on Shukr as if it were a normal strike.

Despite the underlying fears, much of life in Beirut continues as normal. Rush-hour traffic snarls the city’s narrow downtown streets and at night restaurants and bars fill up with revelers. But a heightened level of anxiety hangs over the sense of routine. When Israeli fighter jets broke the sound barrier above Beirut as Nasrallah began to speak Tuesday, the city collectively took a beat, fearing the sound marked the beginning of an attack.

The last time Israel and Hezbollah fought an all-out war was in 2006, when Hezbollah fighters ambushed Israeli troops on the border, killing three and kidnapping two. But 18 years later, the devastation of that conflict looms large for many Lebanese. Back then, Israeli fighter jets targeted the Beirut airport on the second day of the war, also bombing key roads and bridges and blockading Lebanon’s ports.

At Shamass’s travel agency, the phones have been ringing nonstop since Shukr was killed in an airstrike in Haret Hreik, just south of the capital, he said. Most of those who are booking travel are people who came to Lebanon to visit extended family for the summer.

“They have jobs, their kids have school, it makes sense to go,” Shamass said.

But for those living in Lebanon, where an estimated 44% of the population was living in poverty, according to the World Bank, there is nowhere to go. Lebanon only shares borders with Israel and Syria, whose economy is also in free fall.

The cost of a one-way ticket out of Lebanon is more than what many Lebanese households make in a month. A flight from Beirut to Paris on Lebanon’s Middle East Airlines costs about $300, and to Istanbul on Turkish Airlines, prices jump to roughly $500 one way. A survey by Human Rights Watch in 2022 put the median monthly household income in Lebanon at $122.

Tourism has also served as a lifeline for the Lebanese economy, with most other sectors hobbled by the collapse. It accounted for more than 10% of the country’s gross domestic product in 2022, according to the World Bank.

Bryan Stern is the founder of the Grey Bull Rescue Foundation, an organization that specializes in extracting and evacuating U.S. citizens from conflict and disaster zones. He said his group has started preparing for missions in Lebanon, chartering boats and working to secure access to planes.

“If you are an American in Beirut, there are just fewer paths out of the country for you,” said Stern, who described his foundation as one that fills the “gaps” left by the U.S. government.

Still, he said he’s encouraging people to get on commercial flights if they can.

“We are the last resort,” he said. “We are not war-zone Uber.”

But not everyone wants to leave. Some Lebanese citizens are returning home so they can be close to family if there’s war — or at least so they’re not stranded elsewhere if the airport is destroyed or damaged again.

“We are all traumatized by what happened in 2006 and the blockade,” said Jean Riachi, 61, a banker who cut short his vacation in Greece to come back to Lebanon on Saturday. “No one wants to take a chance to be stuck.”

During the last war, Riachi said, the Israeli strikes on roads and bridges put everyone on edge: “When you were on the road you were always thinking: It could come at any time.”

But now that they’re back in Lebanon, Riachi and his family haven’t changed their daily routines. The restaurants and shops in his Badaro neighborhood are full as most people continue to enjoy the summer, he said.

His children, grown and living abroad, have also returned to be near him and their mother if the conflict escalates, he said.

“They want to be home,” Riachi said, laughing. “It’s not very special to our family, most Lebanese are like this.”

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Mohamad El Chamaa contributed to this report.