Israeli Offensive and "Foreigners"

Israel has warned civilians to leave southern Lebanon in advance of a threatened offensive by Israel. Foreigners flee Lebanon as violence continues. In scanning the breaking news, I saw lots of nations were pulling their citizens out of Lebanon: 30,000 Filipinos, 20 out of "thousands" of Australians, New Zealanders, 21 out of an estimated 25,000 U.S. Citizens. You get the point. As I heard about this country and that country evacuating tens of thousands of people, I wondered just how many foreigners are in Lebanon - and why.

Well, the answer to that question led to some interesting information. There are a lot of foreigners in Lebanon, and most of them are not tourists. While Lebanon has an estimated population of 3.87 million people, over a million additional foreigners are in the country as workers (CIA Factbook - Lebanon). In fact, the Lebanese labor force is estimated at 2.6 million - not counting the million plus foreign laborers. That means almost 40% of the labor force, and many of those people also have families in country. (Migration News estimates 1.25 to 2.25 million foreign workers in Lebanon.) This makes for a huge (one might say impossible) task for evacuation. A task made even more difficult by Israel's destruction of the Beirut International Airport, blockade of the coast, and bombs and missiles falling everywhere.

I found some interesting information over at the Lebanese NGO Forum. A lot of these workers are Filipino, Sri Lankan, and Ethiopian women working as domestics. This is really interesting given that the per capita GDP is only $6200, the unemployment rate is 17%, and the poverty rate 28% (CIA Factbook 2005 estimate). A second group of primarily Arab males (Egypt, Syria, and Sudan) work in low level service jobs (as noted by the Lebanese NGO Forum - "gas station attendants, janitors, concierges, cleaners, porters, or sanitary workers"). More Egyptian, and many Syrians, (primarily males) are doing "construction, farming, road construction, peddling, and shoe polishing, as well as car-repair and maintenance activities." Finally, there are the white collar workers who are primarily European, American, and Egyptian. Given this labor force concentration, I was not too surprised to see that there are human rights concerns.

So who are these top-tier foreign workers working for? Well, they are largely not working for Lebanese companies. A lot of U.S. businesses have offices in Lebanon, including:"Microsoft, American Airlines, Arthur Andersen, Coca-Cola, FedEx, UPS, General Electric, Parsons Brinckerhoff, Cisco Systems, Eli Lilly, Computer Associates and Pepsi Cola." (Wikipedia)

Given the large U.S. corporate and labor presence in Lebanon, one might think the U.S. would be in significant talks with Israel about the way it is addressing the Hezbollah threat. Add to the fact that the Lebanese government was cooperative in CIA extraordinary renditions, and it only raises more questions.

Here we have the Lebanese government which is apparently open to U.S. corporations, and cooperative in the "war on terror" who is apparently being cold shouldered by the U.S. Meanwhile, the public position of the U.S. is highly supportive of Israel's actions - both in Lebanon and in Gaza. Given that there are also 25,000 U.S. citizens under the threat of the Israeli bombing, wouldn't you think that there might be a bit stronger stance than "Israel has a right to defend herself" (Bush statement from last night's news).