Running from war

Russia evacuates its citizens from Palestine and Lebanon

Never before has Russia carried out such a large-scale evacuation of its citizens from an armed conflict zone abroad. Among those rescued or those who have not yet been helped, there will be their dissatisfied people. (For example, it was impossible to reach the Russian embassy in Lebanon on the numbers that were announced to citizens for emergency communications all these days). But one cannot help but admit that Moscow is doing its best to get the Russians out from under fire. Russia also extended a helping hand to citizens from the CIS countries who, by the will of fate, found themselves in the conflict area. The first buses with our refugees from Lebanon - 250 people - reached Syria yesterday evening. The evacuation is accompanied by intensive efforts to extinguish the flaring conflict. Experienced diplomats - Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Saltanov and the Foreign Ministry's special representative for Middle East settlement Sergei Yakovlev - urgently flew to the Middle East from Moscow.

Such an unprecedented evacuation could not have happened without inconsistencies and hassle, but it is a pity that not all participants in the conflict were fully understanding of Russian efforts. Israeli security services refused to allow one family to leave at all, citing a threat to their security as the reason. According to the newspaper Vremya Novostei, we are talking about a Russian woman, the wife of a Palestinian, and her children, who aroused suspicion - an 18-year-old boy and a 17-year-old girl. When they were not allowed to leave bombed Gaza, their mother remained at home. Several more families were afraid to move because of the shelling (they live in the town of Rafah on the outskirts of the sector, closer to the border with Egypt). Several women’s documents were not in order (visas expired, no residence permit in Israel), and the “Palestinian wives” did not move, fearing that they would receive a “one-way ticket” and would not return to their husbands. According to our newspaper, at least 124 Russian citizens remain in the Gaza Strip.

“The Israelis checked the travel lists for three days. Flights from Tel Aviv were not allowed due to Israeli security concerns. We had to leave the Gaza Strip first to the West Bank, and then take two buses to the Israeli-Jordanian border. But problems arose there too,” Viktor Simakov, who is temporarily acting as Russia’s representative to the Palestinian National Authority, told Vremya Novostey. The Russian mission is located in the West Bank city of Ramallah, and only two diplomats work there.

According to our interlocutor, local authorities helped the refugees in the Palestinian territories; the guards of President Mahmoud Abbas took the “Russians” under protection. But near the border with Jordan, the Israelis initially gave permission to leave only adult women, but not children (there were children from one and a half to 12 years old). This is due to the fact that children in Palestine are recorded in their father’s documents, and these are mostly Arabs, and this means that children, in the eyes of the Israelis, are not so much Russians as Palestinians.

“43 degrees hot, two buses with women and children. Hours of waiting. Can you imagine?” says Viktor Simakov. According to him, the situation moved only after the acting Russian Ambassador to Israel Andrei Demidov used “heavy artillery” by calling the big bosses in Israel.

In Lebanon, the evacuation also did not go smoothly. Those in the south of the country never reached Beirut. According to the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations, it is very difficult to travel this route, and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov yesterday completely questioned the possibility of evacuating our people from the south. The roads connecting the south with the capital, according to eyewitnesses, are even more crowded with refugees fleeing the bombings than in the north. This is explained by the fact that the Israelis seek to destroy road infrastructure - highways and bridges - and rockets sometimes hit refugee transport convoys. Since last week, the south of the country has become the main arena of armed confrontation between Israel and the Lebanese organization Hezbollah, whose bases are located mainly there.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that 1,230 Russians and citizens of CIS countries (Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova, Armenia, Belarus and others) will be taken out of Lebanon within two days. The possibility of evacuation to Cyprus by large transport helicopters is being explored. Another route is by land towards the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli to the border with Syria and further along its territory to the international airport in the city of Latakia. From there, people will be transported to Moscow by planes of the Ministry of Emergency Situations.

The Lebanese buses were also mostly filled with women married to Arabs and their children. This predetermined some general nervousness, although, according to the accompanying diplomats, the passengers knew that Israel had promised to refrain from launching strikes “in those areas and at the time indicated for the evacuation of Russian citizens from the conflict zone.” Sobs, as witnesses say, were heard when a radio message was broadcast that Israeli planes had fired several missiles at a convoy of ambulances that was moving from Beirut to Syria along the “eastern route” - to the Lebanese Bekaa Valley bordering this country. To avoid bombs, “Russia” was written in large letters in English on the roofs of the buses.

Everyone, including diplomats who constantly reported on their mobile phones that such and such a section of the route had been completed safely, felt calmer only at the Debussia checkpoint on the border with Syria. There, Syrian border guards, usually meticulous, but in recent days exhausted by the endless spectacle of the exodus, stamped passports almost without looking.

The front-line situation throughout Lebanon, where at least 220 people died in a week, including a family from Canada, forced the Russian ministries involved in the evacuation to meet extremely tight deadlines. To the credit of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Emergency Situations, this evacuation can be recorded as a success.

Western countries prefer to export their people by sea to Cyprus. Yesterday, about 1.5 thousand refugees arrived at the port of Larnaca. Their number is expected to increase to 5 thousand by the end of the week. But there are many thousands of citizens of Canada, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Great Britain, Australia, the USA and other countries in Lebanon. The United States - unlike Russia, which evacuates CIS citizens for free - offered all holders of American passports who wish to leave Lebanon to pay commercial rates for services.

Elena SUPONINA, Ramallah - Moscow, Alexander SAMOKHOTKIN