The “urgent request” comes as fear rises of an Israeli invasion to stop Hezbollah attacks.
By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News
The German and Dutch governments on Wednesday joined Canada in telling their citizens to get out of Lebanon amidst rising fears of an Israeli invasion to stop Hezbollah attacks.
One day after Canada told its citizens it is “time to leave,” Berlin’s embassy in Beirut wrote on its website, “German citizens are urgently requested to leave Lebanon,” giving the same reason as Ottawa: If major hostilities break out, airlines would stop flying and it will be very difficult to exit the country.
The Foreign Ministry added to the travel warning on its own website, stating, ”The security situation in the region is highly volatile.”
“A further escalation of the situation and expansion of the conflict cannot be ruled out,” it added, mentioning specifically the Hezbollah-dominated southern part of the country, and parts under its control further north, including the Baalbek district in the Bekaa Valley.
These are the areas that the IDF has hit repeatedly in airstrikes since the Iranian proxy jumped in to support Hamas in its war against Israel, which began when the Gazan terrorists massacred 1,200 people and took 252 hostage in a surprise invasion on October 7.
The Foreign Ministry of the Netherlands posted a travel advisory on X that “repeats the urgent call not to travel to Lebanon.”
For those already there, it said bluntly, “Leave the country while there are (still) commercial flights.”
Hezbollah has fired thousands of rockets, anti-tank missiles and UAVs over the northern border since then, forcing the evacuation of tens of thousands of Israelis from their homes and the commercial shutdown of the entire region.
Israel has warned again and again that this was an untenable situation and Hezbollah must retreat from the border area and disarm, as per UN Resolution 1701 that ended the Second Lebanon War in 2006 but was never carried through.
Recently, the Shiite Muslim extremists have escalated the number and intensity of its air attacks, and published its drone footage of sensitive Israeli installations as far south as Haifa, an obvious threat that Jerusalem cannot ignore.
The IDF has publicized several recent large-scale training exercises for an invasion of Lebanon, has said its operational plans are ready, and has now reportedly begun quietly moving men and equipment to the north.
The Biden administration keeps saying that they are trying to find a diplomatic solution to the crisis, concerned that a ground war would cause Iran to jump in to help its most powerful proxy.
When U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan met with Defense Minister Yoav Gallant in Washington on Wednesday, the two men discussed those efforts, his office said afterwards in a statement.
All top officials in the Israeli government agree that a negotiated solution is the preferred option.
Hezbollah, however, has stated that it will not stop firing until the fighting stops in Gaza, and Hamas seems completely uninterested in making the minimum concessions necessary for a ceasefire to take place.