WASHINGTON — U.S.-arranged flights have brought about 350 Americans and their immediate relatives out of Lebanon this week during escalated fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, while thousands of others still there face airstrikes and diminishing 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 separately met with officials from the Department of Homeland Security.
Michigan state Rep. Alabas Farhat and Abed Ayoub, executive director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, used the White House meeting to make “a lot of important points about the issues our community members are facing … 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 calling on the U.S. to start a military evacuation. Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said that was not being considered right now.
“The U.S. military is, of course, on the ready and has a whole wide range of plans. Should we need to evacuate American citizens out of Lebanon, we absolutely can,” Singh told reporters.
Israel has opened a pounding air campaign deep into Lebanon and a ground incursion in the country’s south targeting the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militant group. Iran on Tuesday fired nearly 200 ballistic missiles toward Israel, leaving the region bracing for any Israeli retaliation and fearing an all-out regional war.
Israel and Hezbollah have traded fire across the Lebanon border almost daily since the day after Hamas, another Iranian-backed militant group, attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, triggering the war in Gaza.
Other countries — including Greece, the United Kingdom, Japan and Colombia — have arranged flights or sent military planes to ferry out their citizens.
As Israeli bombardments targeting Hezbollah leaders shook Lebanon’s capital last week, “We could still see, hear and feel everything” despite fleeing to the mountains outside Beirut, said Nicolette Hutcherson, a longtime humanitarian volunteer living in Lebanon with her husband and three children.
She and her young children joined crowds heading to Lebanon’s Mediterranean marinas, finding boats for the nine-hour ride to Cyprus. Her husband found a seat on a plane days later to join them.
