TRIPOLI, Lebanon: On New Year’s Eve, a small boat carrying more than 230 would-be migrants, most of them Syrians, broke down and began to sink after setting sail from the northern coast of Lebanon.
Since the collapse of Lebanon’s economy in 2019, an increasing number of people — mostly Syrian and Palestinian refugees but also Lebanese citizens — have tried to leave the country and reach Europe by sea. The attempts often turn deadly.
This time, rescue crews from Lebanon’s navy and UN peacekeepers deployed along the border with Israel, were able to save all but two of the passengers, a Syrian woman and a child who drowned. For many of the survivors, however, the relief was fleeting.
After bringing them back to shore, to the port of Tripoli, where they recovered overnight, the Lebanese army loaded nearly 200 rescued Syrians into trucks and dropped them on the Syrian side of an unofficial border crossing in Wadi Khaled, a remote area of northeastern Lebanon, some of the survivors and human rights monitors said.
It remained unclear who had ordered the deportation but the incident marked an apparent escalation in the Lebanese army’s deportations of Syrians at a time of heightened anti-refugee rhetoric in the small, crisis-ridden nation. Officials with the army and General Security — the agency normally responsible for managing immigration issues — did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
Once on the other side of the border, the boat survivors were intercepted by men wearing Syrian army uniforms who herded them into large plastic greenhouses. They were held captive there until family members paid to have them released and brought back to Lebanon by smugglers.
“It was a matter of buying and selling, buying and selling people,” said Yassin Al-Yassin, 32, a Syrian refugee living in Lebanon since 2012.
Al-Yassin said he paid $600 — to be split between the Syrian army and the smugglers — to have his brother brought back to Lebanon. Syrian officials did not respond to requests for comment on the allegations.
One of the boat survivors, Mahmoud Al-Dayoub, a 43-year-old refugee from the Syrian area of Homs, said he overheard their captors negotiating the price of each detainee.
“I don’t know if it was the Syrian army or the smugglers,” said Dayoub, who has also been registered as a refugee in Lebanon since 2012,
“There were 30 people surrounding us with guns and we didn’t know what was going on,” he said. “All I cared about was not being taken to Syria, because if I’m taken to Syria, I might not come back.”
Dayoub said he managed to slip away and flee back across the border — his family never paid a ransom for him.
Human rights monitors say the case of the boat survivors is a troubling new twist in Lebanon’s ongoing push for Syrian refugees to go home.
Lebanon hosts some 815,000 registered Syrian refugees and potentially hundreds of thousands more who are unregistered, the highest population of refugees per capita in the world. But since the country’s economic meltdown erupted three years ago, Lebanese officials have increasingly called for a mass return of the Syrians.
Lebanon’s General Security agency has tried to coax the refugees into going home voluntarily, with anemic results. In some cases, the agency has deported people back to Syria, citing a 2019 regulation allowing unauthorized refugees who entered Lebanon after April of that year to be deported.
Reports by human rights organizations have cited cases of returning refugees being forcibly detained and tortured, allegations Lebanese authorities deny. Until recently, deportations mostly involved small numbers of people and were carried out under formal procedures, giving the UN and human rights groups a chance to intervene and, in some cases, halt them.
What happened to the boat survivors, “is a violation of human rights and of the Lebanese laws and international treaties,” said Mohammed Sablouh, a Lebanese human rights lawyer.
Lisa Abou Khaled, a spokesperson for the UN refugee agency in Lebanon, said the UNHCR was “following up with the relevant authorities” on the case. “All individuals who are rescued at sea and who may have a fear of (returning) to their country of origin should have the opportunity to seek protection,” she said.
The Lebanese army regularly returns people caught crossing illegally from Syria.
Jimmy Jabbour, a member of Parliament representing the northern Akkar district, which includes Wadi Khaled, said that when army patrols intercept would-be migrants who crossed into Lebanon through smuggler routes, they often round them up and dump them in the no man’s land across the border — instead of initiating formal deportation proceedings.
Afterward, the deportees simply pay smugglers to bring them in again, Jabbour said, adding that he had complained to the army about the practice.
“It’s not the army’s job to create work opportunities for the smugglers,” he said. “The job of the army is to hand them over to General Security … and General Security is supposed to hand them over to the Syrian authorities.”
In contrast to the newly entered migrants, the New Year’s Eve boat survivors included refugees who had been living in Lebanon for more than a decade and were registered with the United Nations.
One of them, a Syrian woman from Idlib who spoke on condition of anonymity fearing retaliation, said she spent two nights detained at the border before her relatives paid $300 for her to be released back into Lebanon.
“I can’t return (to Syria). I would rather die and throw myself in the sea,” she said.
Jasmin Lilian Diab, director of the Institute for Migration Studies at the Lebanese American University, said many refugees take to the sea to avoid deportation.
Diab said her institute found a spike in migrant boats leaving Lebanon in late 2022. Some told her team of researchers that they left because of the increasingly aggressive anti-refugee rhetoric. They feared “deportations were going to happen and that they were going to be sent back to Syria,” Diab said.
“So they felt like it was their only chance to get out of here.”
Saved from death at sea, Syrian refugees face deportation
https://arab.news/6m3yw
Saved from death at sea, Syrian refugees face deportation
- Since the collapse of Lebanon’s economy in 2019, refugees tried to leave the country and reach Europe by sea
- Boat survivors are a troubling new twist in Lebanon’s ongoing push for Syrian refugees to go home
Israel war cabinet minister says to quit unless Gaza plan approved
- Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu dismisses comments as "washed-up words"
- Broad splits emerge in Israeli war cabinet as Hamas regroups in northern Gaza
JERUSALEM: Israeli war cabinet minister Benny Gantz said Saturday he would resign from the body unless Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu approved a post-war plan for the Gaza Strip.
“The war cabinet must formulate and approve by June 8 an action plan that will lead to the realization of six strategic goals of national importance.. (or) we will be forced to resign from the government,” Gantz said, referring to his party, in a televised address directed at Netanyahu.
Gantz said the six goals included toppling Hamas, ensuring Israeli security control over the Palestinian territory and returning Israeli hostages.
“Along with maintaining Israeli security control, establish an American, European, Arab and Palestinian administration that will manage civilian affairs in the Gaza Strip and lay the foundation for a future alternative that is not Hamas or (Mahmud) Abbas,” he said, referring to the president of the Palestinian Authority.
He also urged the normalization of ties with Saudi Arabia “as part of an overall move that will create an alliance with the free world and the Arab world against Iran and its affiliates.”
Netanyahu responded to Gantz’s threat on Saturday by slamming the minister’s demands as “washed-up words whose meaning is clear: the end of the war and a defeat for Israel, the abandoning of most of the hostages, leaving Hamas intact and the establishment of a Palestinian state.”
The Israeli army has been battling Hamas militants across the Gaza Strip for more than seven months.
But broad splits have emerged in the Israeli war cabinet in recent days after Hamas fighters regrouped in northern Gaza, an area where Israel previously said the group had been neutralized.
Netanyahu came under personal attack from Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Wednesday for failing to rule out an Israeli government in Gaza after the war.
The Gaza war broke out after Hamas’s attack on October 7 on southern Israel which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
The militants also seized about 250 hostages, 124 of whom Israel estimates remain in Gaza, including 37 the military says are dead.
Israel’s military retaliation against Hamas has killed at least 35,386 people, mostly civilians, according to the Hamas-run Gaza’s health ministry, and an Israeli siege has brought dire food shortages and the threat of famine.
US, Iranian officials met in Oman after Israel escalation
- Washington called on Tehran to rein in proxy forces
- Officials sat in separate rooms with Omani intermediaries passing messages
LONDON: US and Iranian officials held talks in Oman last week aimed at reducing regional tensions, the New York Times reported.
Through intermediaries from Oman, Washington’s top Middle East official Brett McGurk and the deputy special envoy for Iran, Abram Paley, spoke with Iranian counterparts.
It was the first contact between the two countries in the wake of Iran’s retaliatory missile and drone attack on Israel in April.
The US officials, who communicated with their Iranian counterparts in a separate room — with Omani officials passing on messages — requested that Tehran rein in its proxy forces across the region.
The US has had no diplomatic contact with Iran since 1979, and communicates with the country using intermediaries and back channels.
Since the outbreak of the Gaza war last October, Iran-backed militias — including Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and armed groups in Syria and Iraq — have ramped up attacks on Israeli and American targets.
But US officials have determined that neither Hezbollah nor Iran want an escalation and wider war.
After Israel struck Iran’s consulate in Damascus at the beginning of April, Tehran retaliated with hundreds of ballistic missiles and drones.
The attack — which was intercepted by air defense systems from Israel, the US and the UK, among others — was the first ever direct Iranian strike on Israel, which has for years targeted Iranian assets in Syria, whose government is a close ally of Tehran.
National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said in a news conference this week that the “Iranian threat” to Israel and US interests “is clear.”
He added: “We are working with Israel and other partners to protect against these threats and to prevent escalation into an all-out regional war through a calibrated combination of diplomacy, deterrence, force posture adjustments and use of force when necessary to protect our people and to defend our interests and our allies.”
Gaza hospital says 20 killed in Israeli strike on Nuseirat
- Hospital statement: Israeli air strike targeted a house belonging to the Hassan family in Al-Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza
GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories: A Gaza hospital said Sunday that an Israeli air strike targeting a house at a refugee camp in the center of the Palestinian territory killed at least 20 people.
“We received 20 fatalities and several wounded after an Israeli air strike targeted a house belonging to the Hassan family in Al-Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza,” the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital said in a statement.
Witnesses said the strike occurred around 3:00 a.m. local time. The Israeli army said it was checking the report.
Palestinian official news agency Wafa reported that the wounded included several children, and rescuers were searching for missing people trapped under the rubble.
Fierce battles and heavy Israeli bombardments have been reported in the central Nuseirat camp since the military launched a “targeted” operation focussing on the southern city of Rafah in early May.
Palestinian militants and Israeli troops have also clashed in north Gaza’s Jabalia camp for days now.
Witnesses said several other houses were targeted in air strikes during the night across Gaza, and that air strikes and artillery shelling also hit parts of Rafah during the night.
The Israeli military said two more soldiers were killed in Gaza the previous day.
The military said 282 soldiers have been killed so far in the Gaza military campaign since the start of the ground offensive on October 27.
Houthi missile strikes China-bound oil tanker in Red Sea
- The vessel and crew are safe and continuing to its next port of call: UKMTO
- The incident occurred 76 nautical miles (140 kilometers) off Yemen’s Hodeidah
AL-MUKALLA: Yemen’s Houthi militia launched an anti-ship ballistic missile into the Red Sea on Saturday morning, striking an oil tanker traveling from Russia to China, according to US Central Command, the latest in a series of Houthi maritime strikes.
CENTCOM said that at 1 a.m. on Saturday, a Houthi anti-ship ballistic missile struck a Panamanian-flagged, Greek-owned and operated oil tanker named M/T Wind, which had just visited Russia and was on its way to China, causing “flooding which resulted in the loss of propulsion and steering.”
Slamming the Houthis for attacking ships, the US military said: “The crew of M/T Wind was able to restore propulsion and steering, and no casualties were reported. M/T Wind resumed its course under its power. This continued malign and reckless behavior by the Iranian-backed Houthis threatens regional stability and endangers the lives of mariners across the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.”
Earlier on Saturday, two UK naval agencies said that a ship sailing in the Red Sea suffered minor damage after being hit by an item thought to be a missile launched by Yemen’s Houthi militia from an area under their control.
The UK Maritime Trade Operations, which monitors ship attacks, said on Saturday morning that it received an alarm from a ship master about an “unknown object” striking the ship’s port quarter, 98 miles south of Hodeidah, inflicting minor damage.
“The vessel and crew are safe and continuing to its next port of call,” UKMTO said in its notice about the incident, encouraging ships in the Red Sea to exercise caution and report any incidents.
Hours earlier, the same UK maritime agency stated that the assault happened 76 nautical miles northwest of Hodeidah.
Ambrey, a UK security firm, also reported receiving information regarding a missile strike on a crude oil tanker traveling under the Panama flag, around 10 nautical miles southwest of Yemen’s government-controlled town of Mokha on the Red Sea, which resulted in a fire on the ship.
The Houthis did not claim responsibility for fresh ship strikes on Saturday, although they generally do so days after the attack.
Since November, the Houthis have seized a commercial ship, sunk another, and claimed to have fired hundreds of ballistic missiles at international commercial and naval ships in the Gulf of Aden, Bab Al-Mandab Strait, and Red Sea in what the Yemeni militia claims is support for the Palestinian people.
The Houthis claim that they solely strike Israel-linked ships and those traveling or transporting products to Israel in order to pressure the latter to cease its war in Gaza.
The US responded to the Houthi attacks by branding them as terrorists, forming a coalition of marine task forces to safeguard ships, and unleashing hundreds of strikes on Houthi sites in Yemen.
Local and international environmentalists have long warned that Houthi attacks on ships carrying fuel or other chemicals might lead to an environmental calamity near Yemen’s coast.
The early warning came in February when the Houthis launched a missile that seriously damaged the MV Rubymar, a Belize-flagged and Lebanese-operated ship carrying 22,000 tonnes of ammonium phosphate-sulfate NPS fertilizer and more than 200 tonnes of fuel while cruising in the Red Sea.
The Houthis have defied demands for de-escalation in the Red Sea and continue to organize massive rallies in regions under their control to express support for their campaign. On Friday, thousands of Houthi sympathizers took to the streets of Sanaa, Saada, and other cities under their control to show their support for the war on ships.
The Houthis shouted in unison, “We have no red line, and what’s coming is far worse,” as they raised the Palestinian and militia flags in Al-Sabeen Square on Friday, repeating their leader’s promise to intensify assaults on ships.
Meanwhile, a Yemeni government soldier was killed and another was injured on Saturday while fending off a Houthi attack on their position near the border between the provinces of Taiz and Lahj.
According to local media, the Houthis attacked the government’s Nation’s Shield Forces in the contested Hayfan district of Taiz province, attempting to capture control of additional territory.
The Houthis were forced to stop their attack after encountering tough resistance from government troops.
The attack occurred a day after the Nation’s Shield Forces sent dozens of armed vehicles and personnel to the same locations to boost their forces and repel Houthi attacks.
Israel war cabinet minister says to quit unless Gaza plan approved
- The Israeli army has been battling Hamas militants across the Gaza Strip for more than seven months
JERUSALEM: Israeli war cabinet minister Benny Gantz said Saturday he would resign from the body unless Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu approved a post-war plan for the Gaza Strip.
“The war cabinet must formulate and approve by June 8 an action plan that will lead to the realization of six strategic goals of national importance.. (or) we will be forced to resign from the government,” Gantz said, referring to his party, in a televised address directed at Netanyahu.
Gantz said the six goals included toppling Hamas, ensuring Israeli security control over the Palestinian territory and returning Israeli hostages.
“Along with maintaining Israeli security control, establish an American, European, Arab and Palestinian administration that will manage civilian affairs in the Gaza Strip and lay the foundation for a future alternative that is not Hamas or (Mahmud) Abbas,” he said, referring to the president of the Palestinian Authority.
He also urged the normalization of ties with Saudi Arabia “as part of an overall move that will create an alliance with the free world and the Arab world against Iran and its affiliates.”
Netanyahu responded to Gantz’s threat on Saturday by slamming the minister’s demands as “washed-up words whose meaning is clear: the end of the war and a defeat for Israel, the abandoning of most of the hostages, leaving Hamas intact and the establishment of a Palestinian state.”
The Israeli army has been battling Hamas militants across the Gaza Strip for more than seven months.
But broad splits have emerged in the Israeli war cabinet in recent days after Hamas fighters regrouped in northern Gaza, an area where Israel previously said the group had been neutralized.
Netanyahu came under personal attack from Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Wednesday for failing to rule out an Israeli government in Gaza after the war.
The Gaza war broke out after Hamas’s attack on October 7 on southern Israel which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
The militants also seized about 250 hostages, 124 of whom Israel estimates remain in Gaza, including 37 the military says are dead.
Israel’s military retaliation against Hamas has killed at least 35,386 people, mostly civilians, according to the Hamas-run Gaza’s health ministry, and an Israeli siege has brought dire food shortages and the threat of famine.
