As bombings intensified around Beirut, only a fraction of the 86,000 Americans and green card holders living in Lebanon evacuated with US assistance.
The State Department said it has made about 5,000 seats available on commercial and charter flights for U.S. citizens, but there's a catch: They have to get to airports on their own amid regular bombings, and many may have to leave family behind .
That's why nearly a quarter of those seats are occupied by 1,100 U.S. citizens, legal permanent residents and family members who fly on 10 U.S.-operated flights, advocates say.
Since July, the United States has had a Level 4 “do not travel” alert, encouraging Lebanese citizens to leave.
September 27, State Department Said it would not change American, leading airlines to charge exorbitant prices – between $5,000 and $8,000 per seat. The department then backtracked and said it would help arrange flights at reasonable prices.
Approximately 8,500 US citizens contacted the US Embassy in Beirut for information and assistance.
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said, “We are continuing flights for now while we assess there is demand.” “We believe it is our duty to do everything we can to help American citizens leave the country.”
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But human rights lawyer Mariah Curry says these efforts are futile without a non-combatant evacuation operation (NEO) to bring in US forces to evacuate Americans.
“The writing was on the wall a few months ago that the situation in Lebanon was going to fall apart,” he told Fox News Digital.
Curry said many of the U.S. citizens and green card holders he works with in Lebanon have family members who do not hold U.S. passports and refuse to leave the region without parents or children.
“The Beirut embassy has made it very clear that it is not processing any new visa applications,” he said.
Curry said the United States should extend the same protections to Israeli Americans and allow U.S. citizens who attempted to flee the region after Oct. 7 to obtain visas for immediate family members.
Addressing the State Department, he said: “You're not talking about how you're contributing to the problem of these flights not being filled. You're not talking about how it's not safe to go to airports, important places. Bombs in recent days in residential buildings at the airport, including the streets around the airport, right?”
Beirut's only international airport is less than five kilometers from Hezbollah headquarters.
When citizens contacted the embassy, they received a similar response to the one shared with Fox News Digital: “We are only assisting US citizens currently in Lebanon and their immediate family members who currently have a valid US or Schengen visa. A valid visa. .Passport holders can visit Turkey without a visa.
“It is absolutely absurd that the United States thinks it is okay to take Americans and their non-American relatives and dump them in Turkey – a foreign government is not responsible for American or Lebanese citizens,” he said. “Another example of this administration’s failure to protect Americans, first in Gaza and now in Lebanon.”
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On October 19, 2023, the US government created a visa waiver program for family members of Israeli-Americans who wanted to flee with their loved ones when war broke out.
“We did the right thing there. We have consistently failed to do the right thing for other classes of American citizens and their families,” Curry said.
Lebanon's security situation is rapidly deteriorating amid Israel's ground assault on Hezbollah's home, but the Biden administration has not yet determined whether to declare an evacuation of non-combatants to bring in US forces to expel the Americans.
It recalls Israel's incursion into Lebanon in 2006, when the US brought in US military personnel to provide safe passage from Lebanon to some 15,000 US citizens. During this period, the IDF bombed Beirut's international airport and its highways.
“The airport is open, but it is not open indefinitely. Last time, Israel attacked the airport directly. I'm sure they weren't under pressure this time, but the pressure isn't working for the White House anymore. Now,” said the boss. research and intelligence officer at the International Security Agency Zev Feintuch says Global Guardian.
About 2,000 people have been killed in Israeli strikes in Lebanon, according to Lebanon's health ministry. It is unclear how many of them were Hezbollah militants, but the number included 127 children and 261 women.
Around 1.2 million – about a quarter of the country's population – fled the war.
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The Israeli military said it struck some 185 Hezbollah targets on Tuesday, while Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon killed dozens of people.
On Wednesday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it attacked a “weapons production facility and Hezbollah intelligence headquarters” in the southern suburbs of Beirut.
Hezbollah leader killed in Israeli airstrike Hasan Nasrallah, and now also his successor, according to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
