WASHINGTON — U.S.-organized flights took about 250 Americans and their relatives out of Lebanon this week escalated fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, while thousands of others there continue to face airstrikes and declining commercial flights.
In Washington, senior State Department and White House officials met Thursday with two top Arab-American officials to discuss U.S. efforts to help American citizens leave Lebanon. The two leaders also met separately with Department of Homeland Security officials.
Alabas Farhat, Michigan state representative, and Abed Ayoub, executive director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, used the White House meeting to “really raise a lot of important points about the issues that our community members are facing on the ground and a lot of the logistical issues they will face when it comes to this evacuation,” Ayoub said.
Some officials and community leaders in Michigan, home to the nation’s largest concentration of Arab Americans, are calls on US to start evacuation. Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said this is not being considered at this time.
“The US military is of course ready and has a whole range of plans. If we need to evacuate American citizens from Lebanon, we absolutely can do that,” Singh told reporters. She added: “We are not called to do that.”
Israel has stepped up airstrikes and launched a ground incursion into southern Lebanon targeting Iran-backed Hezbollah militant leaders. Iran Tuesday fired nearly 200 ballistic missiles towards Israel, fueling fears that the escalating attacks, including an Israeli response, will culminate in an all-out regional war.
Israel and Hezbollah have exchanged fire across the border with Lebanon almost daily since the day after Hamas, another Iranian-backed militant group, attacked Israel on October 7, leading to the war in Gaza.
Other countries, from Greece to the United Kingdom, Japan and Colombia, have arranged flights or sent military planes to transport their citizens.
An American family mourned Kamel Ahmad Jawad, a resident of Detroit’s Dearborn neighborhood who was killed Tuesday in southern Lebanon after reportedly staying there to help civilians too old, sick or poor to flee.
He had been talking to his daughter on the phone on Tuesday when the impact of a strike overwhelmed him, his daughter, Nadine Kamel Jawad, said in a statement.
“He just got up, found his phone and told me he had to stop praying in case he was struck again,” she said.
The State Department has been telling Americans not to travel to Lebanon for almost a year and has been advising Americans to leave the country on commercial flights for months. It has also made it clear that government evacuations are rare, and is offering emergency loans to ease travel out of Lebanon.
Some Americans said their relatives, who are U.S. citizens or green card holders, have been struggling for days or weeks to get seats on flights from Lebanon. They say there are restrictions on withdrawing money from banks because of Lebanon’s long-term economic collapse and intermittent electricity and internet have made things difficult.
Rebecca Abou-Chedid, a Washington lawyer, said she paid $5,000 on Saturday to put a female relative in the last seat of a flight from Beirut.
“She was on her way to the airport” when Israel began one of the first days of intensified bombing, Abou-Chedid said Thursday.
Jenna Shami, a Lebanese American from Dearborn, Michigan, described American citizens and green card holders in her family struggling to contact the U.S. Embassy after airstrikes forced some from their residence in Lebanon.
The family had been trying to get seats on commercial flights for weeks, facing rising ticket prices and cancellations, she said.
The U.S. Embassy offered loans for charter flights, but Americans couldn’t find planes to rent on their own, she said.
Shami and another family, of a Lebanese-American military veteran from Texas, said their loved ones had just received tickets for upcoming flights and they were hopeful.
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said the US will continue to organize flights as long as the security situation in Lebanon is poor and there is demand.
Miller said Lebanon’s national carrier, Middle East Airlines, also reserved about 1,400 seats on flights for Americans last week. They had taken hundreds, he said.
Miller could not comment on the cost of the airline’s flights, which are not overseen by the U.S. government, but said the maximum fare that would be charged for a U.S.-organized contract flight would be $283 per person.
More than 6,000 U.S. citizens have contacted the U.S. Embassy in Beirut over the past week to request information about their departure from the country.
Not all of these people actually sought assistance to leave, and Miller said the department understood that some Americans, many of whom are dual U.S. and Lebanese citizens and long-time residents, might choose to stay.
Miller said the embassy is willing to offer temporary loans to Americans who choose to remain in Lebanon but want to move to a potentially safer part of the country. The embassy would also provide emergency loans to Americans who want to depart on U.S.-contracted flights.
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Cappelletti contributed from Saginaw, Michigan. AP reporters Tara Copp and Lolita C. Baldor contributed from Washington.