The governments of several Western countries took such steps as fighting between Israel and Hezbollah intensified in southern Lebanon following the killing of the militant group’s leader Hassan Nasrallah. The Armenian ambassador in Beirut, Vahagn Atabekian, said that Yerevan should not follow suit because the fighting has not yet approached the country’s Armenian-populated areas.
Lebanon is home to up to 100,000 ethnic Armenians making up an influential Christian community. Thousands of them are believed to also have Armenian passports.
“I think that the situation does not pose a threat to the Armenian community at the moment,” said Avedis Dakessian, chairman of the Lebanese branch of the Armenian Democratic Liberal Party. “We do not see the need for evacuation for the Armenian community in the current situation. We just need to provide economic aid to them because the situation is getting worse.”
Israel has heavily shelled and bombarded Lebanon for the last two weeks, killing around 1,000 Lebanese and forcing 1 million to flee their homes. No Armenians are known to be among the victims, according to Shahan Kandaharian, the editor-in-chief of the Lebanese-Armenian newspaper Aztag.
“Right now I too don’t see the need for evacuation,” Kandaharian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. “But I don’t exclude such actions if the hostilities take on a larger scale.”
Armenia was also in no rush to withdraw a small contingent of its peacekeeping troops which is part of the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL). The Armenian Defense Ministry argued on Tuesday that they are now deployed “outside the zone of conflict and combat operations.”