TThe Princess 2010 yacht is an impressive specimen of a boat. Before the war, its shiny white hull could be seen cruising the Lebanese coastline, with revelers paying $600 each to enjoy every inch of the 24-meter-long ship.
The princess has been on a very different type of journey since Israel began heavy bombing raids across large swaths of Lebanon on September 23rd. A $1.3 million ship is ferrying families from Beirut to Cyprus, replacing bottles of champagne with hastily packed suitcases.
“The trips are fully booked and we have made about 30 trips on two ships since the bombing began (September 23),” said the broker who works with the captains to transport people to Cyprus. , said Khalil Bechara.
Seats on the boat to Cyprus cost $1,800 per person, which isn’t cheap. But demand is rising as people desperately try to find a route out of Lebanon.
Since fighting began between Israel and Hezbollah on October 8 last year, Israeli military operations have killed around 2,000 people and injured more than 9,000, with most of the casualties occurring after September 23. It is occurring. Lebanon’s interim prime minister, Najib Mikati, said Thursday that more than 1 million people have been evacuated since then.
A massive explosion shook the sky early Friday morning near Beirut’s main airport. The airport is still open, but only Lebanese national carrier Middle East Airlines flies to it. People are competing for the few remaining seats on departing flights, while embassies are chartering private flights for their nationals. On Friday, Greece sent a C-130 military transport plane to Beirut to evacuate 60 Greek and Cypriot nationals.
Some private jets will no longer land at airports, private jet owners told the Guardian. They said their plane was forced to land at Paphos Airport in Cyprus for insurance purposes.
Instagram is full of sponsored content promoting people who want to flee Lebanon by any means possible. Some of the boats resemble those that have sailed for years from the port of Tripoli in northern Lebanon to Cyprus and Italy, full of Syrian refugees hoping for a better life.
“A lot of people have asked for these trips…Airports are still open, but those who have money are willing to pay,” Bechara said. He added that the boats he worked on could seat up to 15 people, were insured and fully met safety standards.
Most Lebanese cannot afford luxury yachts, and many do not have the necessary visas to land on Cypriot shores.
Sahar Soulani, a 33-year-old Lebanese woman who works for an international NGO, is looking for a way to get her parents and brother’s family out of the country. Her family left Dahiyeh, a southern suburb of Beirut, after an Israeli airstrike on September 20 destroyed a nearby residential building, killing 45 people.
Soulani’s family is unable to travel to Cyprus by boat due to prohibitive costs and visa requirements. They planned to travel to the Syrian border, take a bus through Syria to Amman, Jordan, and then board a plane to Muscat, Oman, where his sister lives.
The Lebanese government says more than 300,000 people have entered Syria from Lebanon in the past 10 days to escape Israel’s bombing campaign. But on Friday morning, they woke up to the news that Masna, the main border crossing into Syria, had been bombed by Israel. The Israeli military claimed that Hezbollah was using Masna to smuggle weapons into Lebanon.
Soulani immediately called a travel agent and was able to book her parents separate flights for a little over a week from now. We were unable to travel on the same flight because there were no seats available.
“I’m worried that the airport will be closed before they leave. I’m checking the calendar and counting the days. The situation is getting crazier by the day,” Soulani said. . She herself has no intention of leaving, as she waits to see if the fighting will affect her neighborhood in Akrafieh, east of Beirut.
“I never imagined or accepted fleeing Lebanon. Maybe I left because I found a better opportunity elsewhere, this is life. But if I were forced to leave, who would I be? will not accept this,” Soulani said.
For those who managed to leave Lebanon, the journey was difficult. Rasha Jabr, 39, a consultant working in the humanitarian sector, was struggling to find a place on the plane with her daughter, who was due to start university in Germany next week.
Her husband advised her to pack her bags and go to the airport at 6 a.m. every day to wait in case someone didn’t show up to fly. Eventually, through an enterprising travel agent, she was able to find a seat on a flight to the United Arab Emirates.
On Thursday night, as she was loading her car to head to the airport, bombings began near her home in Choeifat, near Beirut’s southern suburbs. “As I was unpacking my belongings in the car, black dust was pouring down on me because of the chemicals in the missile,” Jabr said.
Israel said it was carrying out the most intensive attacks since the start of the war, targeting Hashem Saffieddin, the successor to Hezbollah’s late secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed by Israeli forces last week. .
“I was at the airport when they were bombing, and I was thinking, are they going to bomb planes? Are they going to bomb the airport?” Jabru said. While smoke from Israeli bombing was visible from the airport, the plane took off and arrived safely in the UAE. “I am luckier than others because I have residency rights in Dubai. But I have a hidden guilt, which is easily dealt with. It’s not something we can do,” Jabru said.