Billions for Israel, but no aid for Americans fleeing Middle East conflicts

"My daughter, (even) now, she hears normal aeroplanes, and she still thinks it's the war planes on top of our house." That's Hanine Al-Khayat, a 26-year-old Lebanese American citizen, who had no choice last month but to flee Beirut with her three-year-old daughter.

Amid Israel's bombing campaign, she was forced to leave behind many members of her immediate family, including a six-year-old sister.

Her evacuation, effectively unassisted by the United States, came just weeks after an Israeli cyber-terrorist attack on the Lebanese people.

The explosion of thousands of pagers on September 17 and 18 across the country kick-started an intrusive and disastrous new front in Israel's war on Gaza—one recognised as unequivocally illegal in the eyes of international law.

Nearly 86,000 American citizens reside in Lebanon, according to 2022 US State Department figures, primarily alongside family members—only some of whom are green card holders.

Reuters reports that between 45,000 and 60,000 Palestinian Americans live in the West Bank. The State Department has declined to make the number of US citizens trapped in Gaza known, according to Axios.

Since Israel's assault began, the US government has done little to secure the safety of Americans trapped in both Lebanon and Palestine.

Double standard in action

At present, there is no legal framework under which American citizens trapped in Gaza or Lebanon can travel to the US through evacuation procedures.

The State Department has refused to designate the circumstances in Lebanon as worthy of a Non-combatant Evacuation Operation (NEO), and US citizens in Gaza. The US carried out NEOs most recently in Afghanistan and Sudan, in 2021 and 2023, respectively.

Americans in Israel, however, have been given more consideration.

Many Lebanese said they find the US's lack of assistance offensive and hypocritical, in light of the active onslaught on their country by Israel - in conjunction with American military aid.

"I couldn't get in the car. I was scared, you know, I stayed almost a year at home, not knowing what to do. I had to beg my husband not to go to work,” Al Khayat told TRT World.

Following the Hamas-led attacks on Israel last October, and the country's subsequent war on Gaza, Hezbollah began sending missile strikes into Israel.

Tel Aviv has in turn increased its attacks on Lebanon over the past year.

"The war is in Lebanon, (whether) in the South or the North or Beirut, the war is in Lebanon. We are all Lebanese, you know. We all have to go through that," Al Khayat said.

While Americans in Lebanon and Gaza have been effectively left to fend for themselves, Israeli Americans have had chartered flights out of the conflict region secured for them since October 15, 2023, on the condition that they repay the loan provided to them by the US government.

Meanwhile, US NGOs have already collaborated with state governments to enable the seemingly expense-free evacuation of some Americans from Israel.

In one case, Florida-based Project Dynamo evacuated 270 Americans from Tel Aviv to Tampa. According to News4Jax, a local Florida broadcaster, the state confirmed the travellers arrived without incurring out-of-pocket expenses, but they did not comment on where the funding came from.

Lebanese Americans have been presented with the same option in writing, but for many the apparent costs are exorbitant, the interest rates are unclear, and the outlook is grim.

"I would love for the US State Department to answer that question on why they have billions of dollars to send to Israel…to cause this huge displacement of people and these humanitarian crises, yet do not have the money to bring their citizens and their families home," says Farah Chalisa, a human rights attorney and co-founder of INSAF project, an organisation representing US citizens like Al-Khayat and others from Lebanon and Gaza.

Like Al-Khayat, 37-year-old Layal—who did not wish to share her last name—is a mother of three young children also had to make a difficult decision shortly after the crisis in Lebanon escalated in late September.

Should she journey to the US for the sake of her children, even if it meant leaving her ageing and disabled father behind in a war zone, only to be cared for by her youngest brother?

Layal told TRT World that, in addition to struggling with high blood pressure, cholesterol, and diabetes, her 63-year-old father recently underwent a taxing hip surgery.

"He lives with my 23-year-old brother…and basically when my mom came, he was the only one who's living with him, taking care of him. So they depend on each other, especially with my dad's health issue."

As the law stands, her brother would not be able to travel alongside her father to America due to differing immigration statuses.

Layal shared that her father and brother have experienced building bombings just five minutes away from where their family home is located. She added that being separated from her family, knowing the conditions they are living under, "is like living in a nightmare."

She continued, saying, "As a US citizen, I feel like I have to bring my family here. Why should we be separated? Especially in this kind of situation. It's not a normal situation. They are in danger, and we cannot go there to see them, and we don't know if we're gonna see them again or not."

A host of viable humanitarian infrastructures exist in circumstances such as these, but the State Department's bureaucratic procedures have given way to total negligence of these US citizens and their families.

Chalisa, who also represents Layal, is working to establish an official program of humanitarian parole at the level of the US government for family members of Lebanese-Americans trapped abroad. She adds that "rather than an immigration status if the government were to implement such a program, anyone who is in danger can come to America via this (program)."

Disappeared and disrespected

Al-Khayat describes her futile experience with the Department of State in attempting to coordinate expedited visas for her family's travel. She tells TRT World, "I have so many emails from the embassy, from the Department of State…from Egypt, from Dubai, just (saying), help me!"

Al-Khayat firmly holds that it is her right to advocate for her family to be rescued: at the very least, as an American citizen, she deserves to be addressed directly and effectively by the State Department.

The Embassy of Egypt has expressed a willingness to support her family in receiving expedited visas. But Al-Khayat noted that the State Department has to provide the final "okay" before any Embassy, like the one in Egypt, can move forward in expediting the US visa.

The State Department has on several occasions provided unclear or contradicting answers on the status of her family's application process. She lamented, “I've contacted the Department of State many times, and they tell me, you can go to a third country. How can I? How can I do that?...It's just unfair."

“It's not just me, it's many other families…people maybe are even stuck till now in Turkiye. They don't know what to do. The Embassy of Beirut, they told me, 'just go to Turkiye and then from there, you do you.' "

Among the few Lebanese who had the means to leave, none have been able to effectively negotiate with the State Department to secure emergency travel allowance for their immediate family members—a diplomatic privilege Israelis were afforded just days before October 7.

Israel was designated into the Visa Waiver Program on September 27, 2023. Beginning October 19, 2023, non-American Israeli citizens became eligible to apply for special travel admission to the United States through the expedited Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA).

While the ESTA is intended for short-term, business or tourism travel, it is an additional infrastructure for time-sensitive departure that no citizen of a Middle Eastern nation, save Qatar, is able to access.

Justice and equity needed

The value the US government places upon the life and family of a US citizen residing in the Middle East is evidently predicated on the hyphenated nationality they hold in addition to being an American.

Just this week, the US vetoed a UN resolution to call for an immediate ceasefire to Israel's US-funded genocide in Gaza in service of the seven Israeli-Americans who remain captive in Gaza.

But what of the countless other Palestinian-Americans in Gaza that the State Department refuses to even release statistics on?

What of the families of Layal, Al-Khayat, and thousands of Lebanese-Americans with traumatized young siblings and chronically ill elderly parents who deserve better than the strategic disregard the State Department has paid their cases?

Most of all, what of the hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women, and children who have been murdered or maimed throughout Gaza and Lebanon: do their lives fail to find any ratio of significance in the calculations made for the preservation of humanity?

Amid ceaseless war, invasion, destruction, medical catastrophe, and genocide, the US government must hold itself responsible in word and in action to all of humanity in the line of fire.