Saudi Arabia, Gulf emirates, Britain and Germany issue travel bans and restrictions on citizens visiting Lebanon

Saudi Arabia, the Gulf emirates, Britain and Germany have issued travel bans and restrictions on their citizens visiting or travelling to Lebanon ahead of the peak tourism season. The advisories have been prompted by clashes which erupted late last month between Palestinian factions in Ain al-Hilweh refugee camp near the southern Lebanese port city of Sidon.

Saudi Arabia, the Emirates and Bahrain have urged their nationals to leave or cancel travel to Lebanon. Kuwait, Oman and Qatar called on citizens summering in Lebanon to refrain from entering dangerous areas. Britain has advised its citizens to avoid the Sidon area, while Germany told its nationals not to visit Palestinian camps.

Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister Najib Mikati said there was no reason for “concern or panic”, while interim interior minister Bassam Mawlawi said the camp, which houses more than 60,000 Palestinians, had returned to calm and security forces “have no information that the situation could spin out of control”.

At least 13 people were killed in Ain al-Hilweh and 20,000 forced to take refuge in Sidon during fighting between members of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah movement and Islamist groups. Fighting did not spread to the other 11 Palestinian camps which host 250,000 refugees.

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Federation of Tourism Syndicates head Pierre Ashkar told L’Orient Today, “It is definitely a negative episode, but we need to wait to see the reaction of tourists from these countries.”

He said “there have been no hotel reservation cancellations”, and he predicted that the flow of tourists could continue until mid-September. While 75 per cent of tourists are Lebanese expatriates, the rest are mainly Arabs. While tourists from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf have not been visiting Lebanon in large numbers for more than a decade, there is concern that their governments’ travel advisories could cause other nationalities to abort plans to travel to Lebanon.

Lebanon expects to gain $9 billion in hard currencies from 2.2 million visitors this year. This would exceed 2019 revenue and visitors before the country’s political paralysis and economic meltdown which coincided with the Covid pandemic.

Lebanon’s currency has lost 90 per cent of its value since 2019, and 80 per cent of its population now live in poverty. According to the World Bank, Lebanon’s economic and financial crisis ranks among the world’s three worst since 1850.

Saudi Arabia has joined France and the US to press Lebanon’s political elite to end the country’s political deadlock by electing a new president to replace Michel Aoun who retired in October 2022, form a fully empowered government and enact reforms required to secure $21 billion in financial aid.

Saudi ambassador to Lebanon Walid Bukhari said Riyadh “has been and will be one of the biggest supporters of tourism in Lebanon and the coming period will prove that if the Lebanese reach a solution for their crisis”.

In addition to tourists Riyadh must consider hundreds of Saudis residing in Lebanon, many of them Syrians who were rewarded with Saudi nationality for helping to build the kingdom in the 1960s and 1970s.

A Saudi businessman was kidnapped in May and released by Lebanon’s security agents without payment of ransom.