LEILA FADEL, BYLINE: Few understand the magnitude of Israel's war in Lebanon better than Dr. Firass Abiad. He was Lebanon's public health minister from 2021 to 2025, and he helped the country navigate the start of Israel's war against Hezbollah in 2024, a war that is now raging again and has displaced roughly 1.2 million people, a quarter of the country's population.
FIRASS ABIAD: These people are already being hosted by an equivalent number of people who are themselves vulnerable. And now they have to share with them what little resources they have. And in my opinion, this means that both populations are devastated.
FADEL: What do you make of the way that the Lebanese government has responded?
ABIAD: Well, I think that the Lebanese government has tried its best in the sense that if you look at the current war in Lebanon, the majority of the Lebanese do not want this war, and the majority of Lebanese do not want what Hezbollah started doing. But the other route, which the Lebanese government was trying to do, has been undermined by the escalation that we are seeing by the Israeli government. Clearly, Israel is using the current conflict to enact some of its long plans to seize over land. Expand its northern border. This is something that they say, you know, in public. I mean, this is what their minister of finance just said.
So unfortunately, the occupation of Lebanese lands and the evacuation of more than half a million individuals from the south actually strengthens the point that Hezbollah was trying to make when it talks about fighting the invaders and resistance and so on. So I think that despite what all the Lebanese government is trying to do, it is being undermined by the fact that Israel is not responding to its efforts to find a diplomatic solution to this predicament. You know, two extreme views of how this conflict is to be resolved have agreed with each other, the extreme view from Israel, and unfortunately, the extreme view that we have in Lebanon.
FADEL: I want to talk about what health care workers are going through right now.
ABIAD: Yeah.
FADEL: I mean, when we spoke back in 2024, you said that health care workers, medical facilities, first responders were being targeted by Israel's military. What is happening now?
ABIAD: Well, it's very clear that there is targeting of health care personnel, first responders and health care facilities. When you have 10 first responders killed within almost a period of 24 hours, it's very difficult to say that this is an accident. When you have the spokesman of the Israeli army saying that ambulances - with no proof whatsoever - are being used to transport weapons to justify the direct targeting. It makes, you know, being a first responder a very dangerous job in Lebanon. What that means is that access to medical care, whether if you are injured, if you are a casualty, or even if you're somebody who couldn't just leave your home in the south and you want access to regular medical care, your chronic medications, you want to go to a primary health care center. Unfortunately, these are being targeted directly by Israel. And, you know, it is a very clear attempt at driving people into despair, expanding a sense of hopelessness, and what is happening is ethnic cleansing.
FADEL: When you say it's an act of ethnic cleansing...
ABIAD: Yeah.
FADEL: ...Can you say more?
ABIAD: I was just reading before coming on the show...
FADEL: Yeah.
ABIAD: ...What the minister of defense was saying, and he was talking about that what was done in Gaza, which was ethnic cleansing, is going to be done in Lebanon. He's talking about razing all of the civilian homes to the ground. He's talking about a completely depopulated area. And we are talking about the equivalent of almost 20% of the size of Lebanon. I mean, we're not talking about a small piece of land here. And also when you hear, as we said, the minister of finance talking about that this is the natural border of the greater Israel, then it's all very clear. And as I said, this is not inferences. This is what the Israelis themselves are saying out loud.
FADEL: What do you want to see from the international community?
ABIAD: What we need more than aid is we need a push for a ceasefire and for negotiations to be able to reach a diplomatic solution. And short of that, at least what we want from the international community is a push to uphold the international humanitarian law, to uphold the Geneva Convention, to have respect, to have sanctity, for the health care workers, for civilians, something against the indiscriminate attack on civilian homes, civilian buildings, civilian, you know, livelihoods. I think this is the least that Lebanon calls for, and not only for Lebanon, because what is happening here, this is a precedent. It is a precedent being set in wars and the attack on civilians, on health care facilities. In my opinion, this is being normalized, and we will see a lot of that in future conflicts. And this is unfortunately what I think the current wars in the region are bringing us to.
FADEL: Dr. Firass Abiad served as Lebanon's minister of public health from 2021 to 2025. He is a medical doctor and joins me from Beirut. Thank you so much for your time.
ABIAD: Thank you, Leila.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Of course, we cover all sides of this story and asked Israel's military if it is targeting Lebanon's health care facilities. The military said it, quote, "targets only military targets" and asserted, quote, "Hezbollah systematically exploits ambulances, medical teams and medical facilities for terrorist activity," though the Israelis did not cite examples. The Israeli government did not respond to Dr. Abiad's assertion that Israel is pursuing a policy of ethnic cleansing. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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