Syria's door is open to Lebanese refugees

Jim Maceda Correspondent

DAMASCUS, Syria — Thousands of people, mostly Lebanese, have fled to Syria to escape the Israel bombardment over the past week. NBC News correspondent Jim Maceda reports from Damascus on the how the Syrians are welcoming the Lebanese people while the government wages a complicated diplomatic war.

What is the situation with people fleeing Lebanon and heading to Syria? We went to one of the main border crossings about 25 miles west of Damascus and over the course of a few hours, we saw a steady stream of Lebanese cars, trucks, pick-up trucks fleeing the fighting.

We were told when we were there that it was actually lighter, in terms of the flow of people, than it had been in previous days. Still officials were saying that over the last 24 hours at least 40,000 people had come across, and over the last week at least 100,000 people had come through that one border crossing — which is between east Lebanon and west Syria — so that’s not including any of the northern border crossings.

Though there is no official figure, based on that math, the figures are a lot higher for Lebanese coming into Syria than we’d thought. We had been told that it was about 110,000 to 120,000 people, and it’s probably at least two or three times that.

It is quite interesting what is happening at the borders. The Syrians have basically opened the borders. There are no longer any manned police stations, or customs stations, or people checking baggage — none of the elements you would expect to see at a major border crossing.

People walk across or drive across the border, and are met by dozens of Syrian volunteers and buses on the other side. The Syrian volunteers are handing out pieces of paper with telephone numbers of Syrian families that could accommodate these Lebanese refugees or displaced people.

So, you don’t really see groups of makeshift tents or people in living out of cars because they are being accepted and absorbed by the local population.

That said, on Wednesday we did see the first reports and pictures of these makeshift refugee centers. Not in the streets, but at some schools here in Damascus and one basketball court was turned into a refugee center. So, there is a steady flow of people and the numbers of people are increasing, not decreasing.

In fact, there are even some Lebanese-Americans coming to Syria. We started speaking to one young veiled woman at the border who it turned out was from Dearborn, Mich.

She had come to visit some Lebanese relatives in the eastern Lebanon on July 9 and the bombing started a few days later. Her extended family’s house had been hit by shrapnel and the doors were blasted off. So, they packed up their car and drove to Syria. She wasn’t sure who they would stay with, but hopefully a family in Damascus, and then she will eventually return to the U.S.

So – there is an international touch to it, but it was almost exclusively Shiites from the eastern part of Lebanon who were coming across the border.

How is Syria dealing with President Bush’s comments that Damascus is at the root of this conflict because of its support of Hezbollah?
Syrian President Bashar Assad has been very vocal about his desire — his immediate desire — for a cease-fire. He and his cabinet members are traveling to other countries, or meeting with foreign diplomats here, trying to push for an immediate cease-fire.

That said, if you read the newspapers in Syria, everyone is extremely anti-Israel, and pro-Hezbollah.

Hezbollah in this country is considered to be the official Lebanese national resistance. In fact, that is what it is called. It’s never just called “Hezbollah,” it’s called the “national resistance” in common parlance.

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