Despite escalating tension between Israel and Hezbollah, it’s business as usual at Beirut airport

Beirut: Fears of an escalation in the simmering conflict between Hezbollah and Israel have prompted some airlines to cancel flights to Lebanon, but business appeared to be proceeding as usual Tuesday at the Beirut airport, where many travellers greeted the warnings with a shrug.

Hadi Sharqawi, 24, a Lebanese student in Italy, arrived Tuesday after two days of flight cancellations, to spend a month and a half with his family as he normally does in the summer. He is from the town of Kharayeb, which is in southern Lebanon although relatively far from the border where clashes have been ongoing for 10 months. “As far as the threats, they didn’t influence me at all to not come to Lebanon,” Sharqawi said. “Even if there are threats, we will still come.”

Seventy-one-year-old Mohammad Mokhaled, from the southern town of Jarjouh, who was waiting to pick up his daughter Tuesday, agreed.

“We are not scared of the situation, because we are used to this,” he said. “We hear airstrikes regularly and the breaking of the sound barrier, and it doesn’t affect us.” Lebanon is bracing for a retaliatory strike from Israel after a missile hit a football field in the town of Majdal Shams in the Israeli-annexed Syrian Golan over the weekend, killing 12 children and adolescents. Israel accused the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah of carrying out the strike, to which Hezbollah issued a rare denial.

Even before the deadly incident, rhetoric and fears of a full-blown conflict had been intensifying, but it has had relatively little impact on the summer tourist season, during which tens of thousands of Lebanese working or studying abroad typically come to visit their families, filling up restaurants and beach clubs.

Israel and the Lebanese militant group have traded near-daily strikes since the war in Gaza erupted on Oct.7 following Hamas’ surprise attack on southern Israel.