French President Emmanuel Macron and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau hold a joint news conference in Montreal on Sept. 26. Both countries reiterated calls for a ceasefire in Lebanon and Gaza, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to strike against Hezbollah until it stops firing rockets at Israel.Ryan Remiorz/The Canadian Press
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and French President Emmanuel Macron reiterated calls for a ceasefire in Lebanon and Gaza after Israel rebuffed such a proposal from Western countries.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to carry out “full force” strikes against Hezbollah until it stops firing rockets at Israel as the country dismissed a call from the United States, Canada, France and several other allies for an immediate 21-day ceasefire across the Israel-Lebanon border as well as a ceasefire in Gaza.
“Our commitment to a ceasefire is unflinching,” Mr. Trudeau said alongside Mr. Macron at a joint news conference in Montreal. “There’s a proposal on the table, worked out amongst all parties, and we still hope and expect that all parties will stop this violence and allow de-escalation. There are too many lives at stake.”
Israel carried out a new strike in the Lebanese capital of Beirut, which it said killed a senior Hezbollah commander, and the militant group launched dozens of rockets into Israel. Tens of thousands of Israeli and Lebanese people living near the border have been displaced by the fighting.
Mr. Netanyahu spoke as he landed in New York to attend the annual United Nations General Assembly meeting, where U.S. and European officials were putting heavy pressure on both sides of the conflict to agree to a ceasefire to give time for diplomacy and avert all-out war.
Nearly 700 people have been killed in Lebanon this week as Israel escalated strikes, saying it is targeting Hezbollah’s military capacities. Israeli leaders say they are determined to stop the group’s cross-border attacks, which began after Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack that ignited the war in Gaza.
In Montreal, Mr. Macron said he did not consider the Israeli refusal to be definitive. It would be a mistake on the part of Mr. Netanyahu, he said, to refuse the ceasefire, “because he would take responsibility for a regional escalation, and obviously new civilian victims in Lebanon.”
The French President said he would “do everything to ensure that this proposal is accepted,” including calling another meeting of the UN Security Council.
Mr. Trudeau also repeated calls for Canadians in Lebanon to leave the country, but did not give any additional details on the possibility for Ottawa to organize an evacuation.
Although there is no formal commitment by Canada to evacuate the estimated 40,000 to 75,000 Canadians living in Lebanon, Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly said that plans are in place should the government decide to move ahead.
Lebanese Canadians who spoke with The Globe and Mail Thursday had mixed feelings about how to act.
People clean the streets a day after an Israeli strike on residential buildings in the village of Maaysrah, Lebanon, on Sept. 26.Louisa Gouliamaki/Reuters
Jade Youssef, 65, fled his home in the south of Lebanon with his elderly mother for Beirut, where they’re now staying at his brother’s apartment. “We were really scared,” he said in an interview from the Lebanese capital. “When you see a bomb dropping a hundred metres away from you, it’s traumatizing.”
The drive to Beirut, which typically takes about an hour, took eight hours because of bumper-to-bumper traffic. Mr. Youssef splits his time between Toronto and Lebanon, where he opened the Proflex Canadian Fitness Club in the south. The windows of the gym, he said, were blown out from the force of the explosions.
He said he managed to get a one-way plane ticket to Toronto, leaving Saturday, for about four times the usual cost. His mother, he said, will remain in Beirut. “There’s no use in me staying here in Beirut,” he said. “I don’t know how long this will go. When things get better, I’ll come back and try to take care of the gym.”
He said he wasn’t going to wait to find out if the Canadian government was going to help get him out of the country. “In times like this, you have to be smart about it,” he said. “Get out. That’s all. Any way you can, just get out.”
Reached in a suburb of Beirut, Lebanese Canadian Rodica Feghali, 50, has a different view. She has no plans to leave. “I believe my country needs me,” she said. “I am so patriotic.” She said she has spent the past couple of days calling around trying to find 140 mattresses, as well as clothing, pillows and food, for people who fled the air strikes in the south and are now living in a shelter outside Beirut. People, she said, are also opening up their houses for those who have been displaced.
Ms. Feghali, an English teacher who has two children studying at university in Canada and a teenaged son living with her, has called Lebanon home for more than two decades. “Now is not the time to go,” she said.
Bassima Corban Turcot, 27, also plans to stay in Lebanon for now. Ms. Corban Turcot, whose late father was Lebanese and whose mother is Canadian, has been living in Lebanon for three years, studying online.
“My mind is here, I cannot think of leaving,” she said in an interview Thursday. She is based in the Matn area, east of Beirut, but has been volunteering in a food kitchen for displaced people in the city.
She remains on high alert because of the possibility of a ground invasion by Israel. If this happens, Ms. Corban Turcot said she will try to figure out a way to leave the country, if necessary, by boat or other means. “But historically, the region where I’m based is usually quite safe,” she said.
Ms. Corban Turcot said updates from Global Affairs Canada have so far been unhelpful. And commercial flights, she said, are rare and “prices are crazy.” As of Thursday, one-way flight tickets from Beirut to Toronto or Montreal in the next few days cost between $2,000 and $19,000.
Lebanese-Canadian activist Mohamad Fakih launched a fundraising campaign in partnership with Islamic Relief Canada to support people who have fled the air strikes. His close family lives in Lebanon, including his mother, who told him on Thursday that she had no plans to evacuate from her home in Beirut.
“She was saying, ‘Even if there’s a military operation on the ground, I won’t leave,’” he said. His brother and sister have both fled the south, while his nephew’s wife is working to obtain the paperwork necessary for their newborn baby to get a flight out of the country.
Mr. Fakih, executive chair of Paramount Fine Foods, said that while he understands that the Canadian government has asked its citizens to leave Lebanon, it’s not that simple. “It’s really hard for people to pick up and leave on short notice, and a lot of people just can’t afford to,” he said. “It costs a lot. And they would be leaving their jobs, their income, the place they live.”
He said he believes that the federal government should provide some kind of loan or financial assistance to those seeking to leave Lebanon who cannot afford to pay for a commercial flight.
“Leaving them behind doesn’t only impact those people and their families directly,” he said, “it also impacts our reputation worldwide when it comes to how we treat our citizens.”
With a report from the Associated Press