Smoke billows over Khiam, Lebanon, amid ongoing cross-border hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, as seen from Marjayoun, near the border with Israel, on Sept. 25.Karamallah Daher/Reuters
The federal government has stepped up its plea for Canadians to leave Lebanon as soon as possible, cautioning that an evacuation of its citizens in the event of an all-out war is not a guarantee, while Israel prepares for a possible ground invasion in an escalating conflict.
As world leaders scrambled to avert such an invasion, the head of the Israeli military said in an address to troops gathered on the border that the aerial bombardment of Lebanon is designed to “prepare the ground for your possible entry and to continue degrading Hezbollah.”
The comments, from Chief of Staff Lieutenant-General Herzi Halevi, are the strongest indication yet that Israel will send in ground troops. It would be the latest step in a series of attacks that Israel says are targeting Hezbollah, an Iran-backed paramilitary group in Lebanon.
The U.S. and France were trying to hammer out a 21-day interim accord to halt hostilities. Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati is urging the UN Security Council to press the Israelis for an “immediate ceasefire.”
U.S. President Joe Biden told ABC television that “all-out war” was possible, but added: “We’re still in play to have a settlement that can fundamentally change the whole region.”
In Ottawa, Global Affairs Canada confirmed that two Canadians were killed by Israeli forces in air strikes this week, and Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly said three Canadians in Lebanon were injured in the attacks.
Although there is no formal commitment by Canada to evacuate the estimated 40,000 to 75,000 Canadians living in Lebanon, Ms. Joly said Wednesday that plans are in place should the government decide to move ahead. Ottawa is co-ordinating with American, French and British allies as they also finalize their evacuation plans, she said.
She urged Canadians to leave via commercial flights while the option still exists. “We’ve worked on different contingency plans, but fundamentally it is important to leave now,” Ms. Joly said. A growing number of airlines around the world are suspending flights to and from the Middle East including the Lebanese capital of Beirut.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau offered his condolences to the family of the Canadians killed in Lebanon on his way into Question Period Wednesday. “We are devastated by the loss of two Canadians, but the entire Lebanese people are suffering right now, women, children, innocents, suffering terrible violence and fear,” he said.
“We need to see both Israel and Hezbollah de-escalate. We need to see an end to violence. We need to see civilians protected.”
Tensions between Israel and Hezbollah have steadily escalated over the past 11 months. Hezbollah has been firing rockets, missiles and drones into northern Israel in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza and Hamas.
Israel has responded with increasingly heavy air strikes and the targeted killing of Hezbollah commanders while threatening a wider operation. In a video statement Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged residents of Lebanon to leave the country’s southern region, citing the military operation against Hezbollah.
Lebanon’s health minister said that more than 50 people were killed Wednesday in the continuing Israeli strikes, raising the death toll from the past three days to 615, with more than 2,000 wounded.
Global Affairs Canada, which reported the deaths of the two Canadians on Tuesday night, did not identify the victims. But Kamal Tabaja told The Globe and Mail that the slain couple were his parents Hussein and Daad Tabaja. “Everybody is devastated,” he said of their family and friends.
Mr. Tabaja, who works in Bahrain, said in a phone interview Wednesday that his parents, who were in their seventies, fled their village in the Nabatieh area, in southern Lebanon, to reach Beirut suburbs Monday when the bombing started.
The Israel Defence Forces “gave barely any time for people to move,” Mr. Tabaja said.
Mr. Tabaja said his parents got stuck in traffic for hours in the Ghaziyeh area, outside the coastal city of Sidon.
Around 7 p.m. Monday, Mr. Tabaja and his relatives lost contact with the couple. They put up messages on social media and a relative eventually went to a local hospital to search for them, but the burned remains were unidentifiable.
They went to the site of the bombings and found the couple’s burned car, its plate matching that of Mr. Tabaja’s parents. They also found a watch belonging to his mother.
Mr. Tabaja, who was a teenager when the family immigrated to Canada in 1996, said his parents were innocent civilians who had nothing to do with the conflict.
His father, a former senior manager in telecommunications at the Beirut airport, worked two jobs to provide for his family when they immigrated – as a taxi driver and a pizza-delivery man – while his mother raised Mr. Tabaja and his siblings in Ottawa. The couple had recently been spending about six months a year in Lebanon.
Mr. Tabaja said his parents and other collateral victims of the war should be taken into account.
“The Canadian government shouldn’t be all out when it comes to certain countries or certain people, and then we turn our head away, our hands behind our back when it has to do with other people,” Mr. Tabaja said.
In addition to the couple killed and the injured, there were also reports of the death of a religious leader with connections to Canada.
In a social-media post Monday, the Abo Ther Alghafari Mosque in Ottawa said that it is mourning a former imam at the mosque, Ali Abu Raya, and referred to his death as a “martyrdom.” The institution did not immediately respond to requests for comments.
Nour Kadri, a University of Ottawa professor, said in an interview Wednesday that he knew Mr. Abu Raya in the mid-2000s in his capacity as a fellow leader in the local Lebanese community.
“I’ve known him as a religious leader. I’ve seen some sermons of him, he was a moderate man,” Dr. Kadri said. “He was an approachable guy, nice guy. He always wore a smile,” he said. “He used to joke a lot.”
A Canadian friend of Mr. Abu Raya said Wednesday that Canadian government authorities revoked the prayer leader’s immigration status when he went abroad in the mid-2000s and that after that he was never allowed back in.
“He spent six years here from ‘99 to 2005,” said Ottawa resident Kamel El-Cheikh. But then “he left to vacation in Lebanon, and then they just didn’t let him back.”
Under Canada’s immigration laws, federal officials are allowed to deem someone inadmissible for a variety of reasons.
Mr. El-Cheikh said that he did not know precisely what those reasons were and that he considered Mr. Abu Raya, whom he said has two adult children who are Canadian citizens, to be a religious scholar who was not tied to Hezbollah.
Global Affairs said it has seen “an increase in the number of enquiries at our emergency watch and response centre” over the weekend relating mostly to departure options, travel documents and visas. Ms. Joly said Ottawa has increased its consular presence in Lebanon to ensure travel documents can be processed quickly.
The New Democrats on Wednesday called on Ottawa to immediately begin evacuation efforts from Lebanon.
However, Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet said he generally supports the federal government’s position that Canadians should leave on their own accord while they still can. “They are telling Canadians in Lebanon to get the hell out of there,” Mr. Blanchet said.
That position was also supported by the Conservatives who said the federal government should “provide a full and transparent update on contingencies prepared.”
With reports from Associated Press and Reuters