Michel Awad, 65, at his home in Broumana, Lebanon, on July 5. Behind him hangs a portrait of his granddaughter Alexandra, who was wounded in the Beirut port explosion in July 2020 and later succumbed to her wounds.Oliver Marsden/The Globe and Mail
Michel Awad has lived through Lebanon at its worst. But as war looms again, he believes it may soon be time to give up on this country for good.
Mr. Awad’s apartment was damaged by a rocket attack in 1989, in the last days of a 15-year civil war. He survived 33 days of war in 2006 between Israel and Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed militia based in Lebanon. Devastatingly, his three-year-old granddaughter, Alexandra Naggear, was among the 218 victims of a massive explosion in the port of Beirut four years ago that has never been fully investigated.
Now another war between Israel and Hezbollah seems increasingly possible. The Canadian Embassy is warning citizens to “book a flight to leave the country now,” while also making contingency plans to evacuate those who remain.
Mr. Awad – who has Canadian citizenship and lived in Montreal between 1989 and 1996, before moving back to Lebanon to be closer to his ailing mother-in-law – isn’t heeding the advice yet. The odds of all-out war still feel remote, particularly at his home in Broumanna, a predominantly Christian village in the hills above Beirut. He doesn’t want to give up his fight to hold someone accountable for the blast that killed his beloved granddaughter.
Michel Awad's home is filled with portraits and photos of his beloved granddaughter Alexandra Naggear.Oliver Marsden/The Globe and Mail
But if the conflict does begin, the 65-year-old said he’ll leave Lebanon – either via a Canadian evacuation of its citizens, or by finding his own way to Canada. Mr. Awad’s response was representative of half a dozen Lebanese with Canadian or other foreign passports who spoke to The Globe and Mail this week.
Many of the estimated 75,000 Canadian citizens in Lebanon are watching and waiting, for now. But if war comes, some say they’ll leave and never return.
“When the time comes and I feel the risk to my daughter and to my parents, I will definitely move to Canada. This time I won’t make the mistake of coming back,” Mr. Awad said, referring to Alexandra’s mother, Tracy, a Canadian citizen who is also pondering a return to Canada.
Mr. Awad said there are 15 families in his neighbourhood of Broumanna who hold Canadian citizenship. Half have already left, while the rest are waiting to see if the war talk – a near-constant feature of life in Lebanon – materializes into the real thing. “If we reach that point, everyone will move to Canada, and this time it will be a one-way ticket.”
In truth, there’s a war already happening just 100 kilometres south of Broumanna, in the hilly terrain of southern Lebanon and northern Israel. Daily exchanges of tank, artillery and missile fire have driven tens of thousands of people from their homes on both sides of the border.
This week, Israeli artillery and warplanes struck Lebanese territory dozens of times, including a drone strike that killed a prominent Hezbollah commander. Hezbollah replied by firing 220 missiles and drones into Israel on Thursday alone. Since October – when Hezbollah launched its first attacks in solidarity with the Palestinian militant group Hamas – more than 430 Lebanese and at least 25 Israelis have been killed.
The only reason Lebanese and Israelis alike don’t use the word “war” to describe the controlled conflict is because both sides know how much worse it can get. Many have personal memories of that 2006 war, which left more than 1,191 Lebanese and 165 Israelis dead while devastating much of southern Lebanon. Both sides claimed victory in that conflict, but until now neither side has shown interest in another round of all-out fighting.
The tit-for-tat exchanges that began in the wake of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, and Israel’s retributive invasion of the Gaza Strip, have been the most serious since the 2006 war ended. The only reason casualty levels aren’t already much higher is that some 60,000 Israelis and 100,000 Lebanese have been evacuated from towns and villages on both sides of the border.
But the uncertain fate of those evacuees is one reason fears are rising that the war in Lebanon is set to escalate just as the heaviest fighting in Gaza looks to be winding down. While hopes for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas were rising this week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has already indicated that any troops withdrawn from Gaza could be redeployed to the Israel-Lebanon border.
A poster of Hassan Nasrallah, Secretary General of Hezbollah, towers above a road in southern Lebanon on May 11. Pressure is high on Mr. Netanyahu’s government to drive Hezbollah, which controls southern Lebanon, away from the border.Oliver Marsden/The Globe and Mail
Pressure is high on Mr. Netanyahu’s government to drive Hezbollah, which controls southern Lebanon, away from the border so that its citizens can return to their homes in northern Israel in time for the September start of the school year.
And while Western diplomats scramble to concoct a diplomatic solution, both Israel and Hezbollah are making preparations for more escalation. “Nobody can imagine what this war will be like. This war will not just be in Lebanon, this war will go into Israel,” said Qassem Qasir, a political analyst and expert on Hezbollah. “What Hamas did on Oct. 7, Hezbollah is also ready to do.” Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, meanwhile, has warned Lebanon would be bombed “back to the Stone Age” if all-out war erupted, while also insisting Israel doesn’t want to see such a conflict.
The 2006 war is remembered by Lebanese-Canadians for the chaotic evacuation of some 14,370 Canadian citizens from Beirut. The sudden eruption of the war caught Ottawa off-guard, leaving it struggling to rent ferries after Israel knocked Lebanon’s only civilian airport out of commission. Lebanese-Canadians were left standing with their luggage in the port of Beirut long after the United States, France and most other countries had managed to get their citizens out to nearby Cyprus.
This time, Canada is more prepared, even as the numbers are potentially bigger – and the what-if scenarios are far worse than in 2006.
Canada’s outgoing top general, Wayne Eyre, acknowledged on June 27 that plans were being made – in conjunction with Canada’s allies – to evacuate up to 20,000 citizens from Lebanon. Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly said in a June 25 statement that due to the “increasingly volatile and unpredictable” security situation, Canadians should avoid travel to the country and “for Canadians currently in Lebanon, it’s time to leave.”
Worries that Israel could once more target Rafik Hariri International Airport grew last month when the British newspaper The Telegraph quoted unnamed sources claiming the airport was being used by Hezbollah to store missiles. The Lebanese government reacted with fury to the article, calling it “ridiculous” and taking diplomats and journalists on a guided tour of the facility.
Fire retardant is deployed after Hezbollah said it launched more than 200 rockets and a swarm of drones at Israeli military sites near the Lebanon-Israel border on July 4.Rami Shlush/Reuters
Getting Canadian citizens out overland is impossible with Lebanon bordered only by a potentially belligerent Israel to the south and civil war-wracked Syria to the north and east. That leaves the port of Beirut as the main exit point, as in 2006. Only this time the facility is still damaged by a massive 2020 explosion.
The war next door in Syria could pose additional challenges, with Lebanon hosting some 1.5 million refugees from that conflict. The possibility that desperate refugees could try to push their way onto any evacuation craft is another worry for planners.
Of course, the best way out is for a war to be avoided. Mr. Qasir said that neither Hezbollah nor Iran wanted to see a war in Lebanon. But he laughed at the idea that the militia would agree to Israel’s demand that it move its fighters and weapons north of the Litani River, 50 kilometres from the Israeli border. “It’s easier to relocate the Litani River further south than to displace Hezbollah northward.”
Elias Stephan, Member of Parliament for the Lebanese Forces and seat on the Foreign Affairs Committee, says Hezbollah is so powerful inside Lebanon that it can decide the country’s future alone.Oliver Marsden/The Globe and Mail
That’s an attitude that infuriates Hezbollah’s Lebanese critics, who feel the country is being dragged into a war the majority of the population doesn’t want. “It should be the government who is responsible to take decisions when it comes to war or when it comes to peace. But they’ve basically surrendered this decision to Hezbollah,” said Elias Stephan, an MP from the opposition Lebanese Forces party and a member of the parliamentary foreign affairs committee.
Hezbollah, Mr. Stephan said, is so powerful inside Lebanon that it can decide the country’s future alone. The country has no president – a post elected by parliament – because Hezbollah and its allies refuse to allow the election of anyone but their chosen candidate, Suleiman Frangieh.
And now it’s Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, not the country’s parliament, who will decide – along with Mr. Netanyahu – what happens next. But the risk that standoff poses for Lebanon has long been accepted as a fact of life here.
“Lebanese-Canadians remain Lebanese in the end. We’re used to living on the edge,” said James Kairouz, a 39-year-old event planner who works in both Montreal and Beirut. “No one really believes there will be a big war in Lebanon. But Lebanese-Canadians are also hoping that Canada will come to save them, in the end.”