Australians are being urged to leave Lebanon and take up offers of more than 500 extra commercial airline seats, but for some families, it’s not that simple.
Lebanese Australians are watching on in horror and concern for their families as Israel bombs southern parts of the nation and areas of the capital, Beirut, levelling buildings and killing hundreds.
One Lebanese Australian, who wished to remain anonymous for privacy reasons, described the heartbreak and emotional toll of worrying about her relatives.
Both sides of her family are from Lebanon, with three generations living across Beirut and the nation’s north.
Thankfully, those in the mountainous north are safe, she says, but a full-scale invasion could change this.
“Those in Beirut are going hour by hour, day by day,” she told AAP through tears, saying the air strikes were not in their areas, but they could hear the constant explosions.
“Some of our relatives are elderly and frail and won’t be able to leave.
“No one in my family would travel out here and leave their mothers, their fathers, their cousins, their aunts, the elderly.”
Her family would “move heaven and earth” to evacuate the elderly to the northern village they’re from, but this may not be feasible even in the worst-case scenario due to the 24-hour care requirement they’re receiving in Beirut.
The emotional turmoil has been compounded by her father’s death five weeks ago.
Sorting through his belongings on Wednesday, she found a letter written by his uncle from the mid-80s, expressing fear about trying to leave during the Lebanese civil war.
Members of her family back then left Lebanon for Kuwait and London.
“Let’s pray it doesn’t get to that point because these relatives won’t be able to leave this time,” she said.
It was always the innocents who suffered, she said as she called for a focus on the human toll, saying the Lebanese people deserved better than constant conflict.
“They call Beirut the phoenix city and they’ve proven that more times than you can count, building back from the ashes,” she said.
“The resolve of the Lebanese people is phenomenal but at the same time, it’s terrible they have to keep doing this.”
Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong is urging people to leave Lebanon by any means after the federal government secured 500 tickets for two flights on Saturday.
That’s on top of 80 seats for Australians and their families on a flight leaving Lebanon on Thursday – but only 35 have been filled.
“Now is not the time for you to wait and see. Now is the time to leave,” Senator Wong said on Thursday.
Any evacuation effort will not be able to accommodate the estimated 15,000 Australians in Lebanon, although exact numbers are unknown.
About 1700 Australians and their immediate family in Lebanon are registered with the Department of Foreign Affairs.
An Australian Defence Force aircraft is in Cyprus to aid with contingency arrangements, with some commercial airlines stopping flights from Beirut.
In recent days, Iran has fired rockets against Israel, which retaliated with a ground invasion and what its military says are attacks on the listed terror group Hezbollah in southern Lebanon and Beirut.
The Department of Foreign Affairs isn’t aware of any Australians killed in Lebanon.
Condemning Iran’s attack, Senator Wong called for an end to the “cycle of violence” and urged all parties to show restraint.
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton said talk of a diplomatic solution was “an appeasement model” and wouldn’t work.
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