Escalation in Lebanon

The Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) has appealed to the German Bundestag to pass a resolution calling on the German Federal Government to work towards peaceful solutions to the conflicts in the Middle East. “The ongoing conflict between Israel and Hezbollah will lead to an ongoing escalation in the entire region. The resulting chaos could lead to a new civil war between different confessional groups,” warned Dr. Kamal Sido, the STP’s Middle East Consultant. Due to the violent clashes between Hezbollah and Israel, around one million people are on the run in Lebanon and also in Israel. Approximately 100,000 people have already fled to Syria. “If the German Federal Government and other EU governments want to have fewer asylum seekers in Germany and the EU, they should cooperate and show more effort to find peaceful solutions to existing conflicts, ensuring that no new armed conflicts arise,” the human rights activist stated in Göttingen today. 

Because of the civil war in Syria, many people fled to Lebanon 10 years ago. Now, they are forced to return to Syria – a country that was largely destroyed and impoverished due to Western sanctions. “How does the German government intend to send people back to Syria from Germany if there is a lack of just about everything – with no improvement in sight,” Sido asked. The German Federal Government should – together with other EU governments – work towards a peaceful solution to the crisis in Syria. A peaceful solution must no longer be made dependent on other existing geopolitical conflicts. This would be the only way to resolve the conflicts, step by step.  

“The German Federal Government and other EU states are partly responsible for the war in Syria. They intervened there without having a realistic plan for a Syria after the Assad era. It is partly because of this policy by Germany and the EU that the situation in Syria escalated, making a peaceful solution increasingly unlikely,” the Middle East expert explained. “Around 1.5 million people from Syria are said to have fled to Lebanon. Among the refugees, there are many members of ethnic or religious minorities – such as Christians, Druze, Isma’ilis, Yazidis, Kurds, Armenians, and Assyrians/Aramaeans.