20 Years--A Look Back: The 2006 Evacuation of American Citizens from Lebanon Published Jan. 16, 2026 By Lt. Col. William Giannetti, USAFR Abstract: This article is a broad overview of the political and military factors leading up to the July 2006 non-combatant evacuation (NEO) of American citizens in Lebanon. It discusses the main trigger points, Israel’s war with Hezbollah, as well as the major power players involved. Israel’s pre-emptive war doctrine figured greatly into the NEO’s planning and execution. Even though communications within Lebanon were largely restricted from the outside world, the Pentagon and the State Department still managed to cobble together commercial and military resources from several domains for what was known as the largest evacuation of Americans in its day. When the Israel Defense Force arrived with their bulldozers, the settlers wept. Believing the land was their God-given birthright, some families defiantly stayed put. As onlookers hurled epithets at the soldiers, teenagers sang protest songs inside the nearby synagogue, to no avail. After five days of negotiations, Gush Katif, the Gaza Strip’s ‘miracle in the desert,’ with its trim looking dwellings and floral hothouses, and many others like it, would become rubble on August 17, 2005. After a 38-year occupation, twenty-thousand troops, accompanied by black-clad police and border guards, expelled 8,000 men, women, and children from the settlement.[1] Under mounting pressure and the U.S.-led “Roadmap to Peace,” Prime Minister Ariel Sharon reluctantly authorized the evictions. Thousands of Palestinians could return home from refugee camps, for now. Within a year, a struggle for the Gaza Strip’s control erupted between Hamas and the West Bank’s Palestinian Authority. After an election, Hamas’ leadership came out on top, promising good governance under a reform agenda. But even as the roadmap’s negotiations continued, Hamas militants fired rockets from Gaza into Jewish settlements in the Negev Desert. Gunmen abducted Corporal Gilad Shalit from Kerem Shalom, a southern border crossing near Rafah, on June 25, 2006. The abductors had a list of demands: return Palestinian prisoners, the rockets would cease, and Corporal Shalit would be released unharmed. The Likud party-led government, now headed by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, answered back with a punishing, systematic attempt to target Hamas rocket sites from the air: Operation Summer Rains. Target: Lebanon Claiming solidarity with the Palestinians, on July 12th, Hezbollah militants abducted two more Israeli soldiers, Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser, who were stationed near the Lebanese border’s Litani region. Olmert called the abductions “an act of war,” vowing to hold their northern neighbor to account.[2] In 2000, the IDF withdrew from southern Lebanon following a grinding, failed eighteen-year occupation to root out militants—their “Vietnam.”[3] Six years on, Olmert vowed this time would be different: no longer would illegally armed terrorists, supported by Syria and Iran, act with impunity. “Lebanon is responsible. And Lebanon will bear the consequences,” said the prime minister at a press conference convened during a meeting with Japan’s prime minister.[4] So began a punishing air campaign. In 33 days, with up to 15,000 soldiers deployed, the air force churned out 15,500 sorties, claiming 7,000 targets were damaged or destroyed.[5] One of those targets was Beirut’s Rafiq Hariri International Airport, packed with tourists on July 14th, visiting relatives and sightseeing the city’s lush beaches for a summer holiday. To Olmert and the IDF, the huge transit hub held a darker purpose—a thoroughfare for Iranian and Syrian lethal aid shipments. The hit by Israeli warplanes cratered the runways, stranding travelers hurrying to escape the escalating violence. In response, Hezbollah’s 46-year-old leader, Hassan Nasrallah, had a few tricks of his own. Fortified by a complex underground bunker command system, Nasrallah fired the group’s longest-range weapon yet: an Iranian Fajr-3. The 240-mm rocket slammed into a Haifa railway station’s maintenance area, spreading carnage and killing 8 people.[6] Complications The war’s rapid, unforeseen onset threw travelers into a panic. Tens of thousands wanted to leave Lebanon as quickly as possible. The would-be evacuees were effectively trapped, with the airport, a vital feature of the Beirut embassy’s emergency action plan, knocked out. Israeli warships blockaded ports of exit, and U.S. interlocutors attempted to renegotiate their reopening with Olmert’s government. The Israeli air force severed Lebanon’s communications with the outside, bombing cell phone towers and power stations. The embassy made an urgent plea to the Pentagon and U.S. Transportation Command for commercial airplanes, ships, and buses to ferry American citizens to Turkey or Cyprus. TRANSCOM diverted some airplanes bound for Iraq and Afghanistan to assist the effort.[7] Amid the confusion, information slowed to a trickle. Previous travel warnings mentioned kidnappings, assassinations, and bombings but no mention of an imminent, large-scale war. Adding to the confusion, Lebanese dual citizens who did not register with the embassy upon arrival sought its assistance to leave the country. Washington ordered its personnel in Beirut not to speak directly to the media. The high rate of public inquiries via email about an evacuation inundated the embassy’s staff. As rumors spread of a free ride home, officials, at first, required travelers to sign an IOU, only to end the practice when they became overwhelmed after five days. No military ships were in the area when hostilities kicked off. The closest task force was a Marine Expeditionary Unit, six days away, in the Mediterranean.[8] Evacuation to Cyprus Even as the facts regarding when, where, and how people wanting to leave Lebanon could do so were unfolding, the first 1,000 departed Beirut for Cyprus via the Orient Queen, a cruise ship, on July 19th. Standing pier-side, then U.S. Ambassador Jeffrey Feltman expected 2,000 Americans to be ferried daily. The number of citizens in the now war-torn country varied; news sources estimated that 25,000 required transportation. [9] A previous Government Accountability Report guessed 50,000 or more.[10] The ambassador claimed anyone asking for help would receive it, though it was unclear who to contact and who was in charge. Those who were able arrived at the hilltop embassy compound to be helicoptered out by U.S. Chinooks and Sea Stallions, carrying 60 passengers each. The U.S. Navy chartered two more cruise ships to increase the pace, though a spokesperson claimed it sought more. British and Canadian citizens who wished to flee coordinated via separate channels, with little American assistance, if any.[11] In all, U.S. planes, boats, and helicopters sent 15,000 Americans to Cyprus. The most activity occurred within about seven days, between the 19th and 25th of July. Due to the combat, hotels and lodging in the capital city Nicosia were cut off. Officials there, however, threw open their doors, allowing people to recover and sleep at local trade show halls and fairgrounds. The Cypriot government and DOD provided emergency meals-ready-to-eat (MREs), cots, portable showers, and entertainment. Some managed their own rides back to the States. Others hopped aboard C-17s to fly to Incirlik, Turkey, or Ramstein, Germany, looking for onward space-available travel or commercial carriers home. They were the fortunate ones; according to the U.S. Army journal Parameters, some 1,200 Lebanese civilians would die in the fighting.[12] The Cordesman Report A U.S. / UN-brokered resolution (UNSCR 1701) ended the war between Israel and Hezbollah on August 11, 2006. The resolution amounted to an expansion of a previous document signed in 1982, which mandated peacekeepers to patrol Southern Lebanon’s border. At its inception, 2,000 lightly armed troops roamed the wooded confines of the Litani River valley, not enough to provide a credible deterrent. The peacekeeping force swelled to 15,000, and without a civil affairs contingent to liaise with the public, the southern Lebanese viewed the Blue Helmets as one occupying army substituted for another.[13] More humanitarian aid accompanied UNSCR 1701. The Israeli Air Force’s bombings damaged 130,000 homes and caused $7 billion worth of destruction.[14] The Bush Administration, following the evacuation, pledged $230 million in reconstruction funds, though only half made it to the ground by January 2007.[15] Given the extent of the damage and the terror both sides inflicted on civilians, did the Israelis and Hezbollah accomplish their war aims? According to Anthony Cordesman’s report for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Olmert’s government had three primary objectives. The first was to compel his counterpart in Beirut, Fouad Siniora, to sever Lebanon’s relationship with Nasrallah and Hezbollah. The air war was instrumental to this end but failed to cause a significant break. Judging by the statistics and the damage’s cost, the IAF’s operations amounted to a terrifying ordeal that drove Siniora and Nasrallah into each other’s embrace. By the early 1990s, Hezbollah shed its religious ideology in part, and, like the IRA’s Sinn Fein party, it achieved a more symbiotic relationship with Lebanon’s political, Christian leadership. Former Israeli defense chief, General Dan Halutz, said the IDF completed its goals within six days of the war’s start.[16] The battle stretched for 28 days without Olmert’s government defining to the military what the end, in fact, looked like. Cordesman draws a comparison between the Israeli strategy and the United States’ experience during the 1991 Gulf War and Saddam Hussein’s toppling in 2003.[17] The lack of a clear plan for conflict termination preceded a failed peace. The second goal was to re-establish Israeli deterrence and credibility as a regional power not to be trifled with. Gains of this sort are seldom permanent, and the IAF’s actions alone should have been sufficient evidence of the latter. Israel’s Likud-led political leadership either did not anticipate (or flatly ignored) Hezbollah’s willingness to continue its resistance. Past day six, the Israeli ground advance was stalled by reservists and commanders inexperienced in small unit tactics, and Iranian and Syrian-supplied anti-tank missiles bogged down Merkava armor columns. With the international outcry over the civilian toll increasing and the hasty U.S.-led evacuation effort’s confusion, Olmert went “all in” with the Israeli Air Force. Both sides gambled with human lives: the Israelis, believing if enough pressure was brought to bear, Beirut would capitulate. Hezbollah’s leaders reveled in the human cost, pointing out that the Israelis care neither for the Palestinians nor the Lebanese. Regarding strategy, Israeli politicians and generals had no accurate measure of whether their responses to the rocket attacks and abductions were practical or proportionate. Still driven in part by Shi’a liberation theology and Israel’s elimination, Hezbollah’s mindset remained unchanged, proving ideologies in war are the most stubborn things to stamp out. For its adherents, simply surviving is victory. However, for democracies like Israel, which are accountable to their constituents, a clear end with measures toward success was essential. Cordesman writes the overall war effort was a failure, primarily due to careless Israeli targeting: 70% of Hezbollah targets withstood the IDF’s strikes from the ground and air.[18] Aftermath Most importantly, the final goal was the captive soldiers’ release. With the three hostages missing in action—one from Gaza and two from northern Israel—Olmert brushed off Prime Minister Siniora and Nasrallah’s cease-fire offers, leaving observers wondering what the war was for in the first place. Operation Summer Rains lengthened through November into Autumn Clouds with no sign of Corporal Shalit. Though public sentiment at the war’s outset was high, Ehud Olmert’s mishandling of the affair plunged his approval ratings.[19] Politically devastated, he resigned in 2008 and became the first Israeli prime minister convicted of bribery charges stemming from his time as mayor of Jerusalem.[20] Regev and Goldwasser died in captivity. That same year, Hezbollah leaders returned their remains to Israel in exchange for the bodies of 200 militants and five Lebanese prisoners.[21] In 2011, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the IDF’s Chief of Staff, General Benny Gantz, greeted a worn, weary—but alive—Gilad Shalit.[22] The government negotiated the corporal’s release for over 1,000 Palestinian prisoners. One of them was Yahya Sinwar. Six years later, Sinwar was elected leader of Hamas in Gaza. He orchestrated the gruesome attacks on Israeli settlers on October 7, 2023, and was killed in an Israeli airstrike during the Israel-Gaza conflict.[23] Hassan Nasrallah appeared reflective at war’s end, even chastened, for the entire experience. In hindsight, had he known the soldiers’ capture would have resulted in so much devastation, he wouldn’t have supported the war in the first place.[24] Nasrallah’s words proved to be apocryphal. In September 2024, Israeli warplanes claimed the Hezbollah leader’s life inside his southern Beirut bunker following one of the final bombings of the Gaza war.[25] Lt Col William Giannetti is the 62d Airlift Wing’s reserve senior intelligence officer. The views expressed in this article do not reflect the opinions of the Department of War and the United States Air Force. [1] Real Stories. “Gaza: The Fight for Israel.” YouTube. Video. [2] Fletcher, Martin. “Regional tensions fuel Lebanon-Israel clashes.” NBCNews.com, July 12, 2006. [3] Parkinson, Sarah E. “The Ghosts of Lebanon.” Foreign Affairs, November 14, 2023. [4] Prime Minister's Office, “PM Olmert: Lebanon Is Responsible and Will Bear the Consequences,” State of Israel, July 12, 2006. [5] Cordesman, Anthony H. The Lessons of the 2006 Israeli-Hezbollah War. Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2007. [6] Mouawad, Jad and Erlanger, Steven. “Israel Strikes Back After Rockets Kill 8 in Haifa.” The New York Times, July 16, 2006.. [7] U.S. Government Accountability Office. The Evacuation of American Citizens from Lebanon in July 2006. GAO-07-893R. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Accountability Office, April 30, 2007. [8] Ibid, GAO report, 5. [9] Associated Press. “Ship carrying 1,000 Americans reaches Cyprus.” NBCNews.com, July 19, 2006. [10] Ibid, GAO report, 3. [11] Deutsche Welle. “By Land and Sea, Europeans Flee Lebanon for Their Lives.” DW.COM, July 18, 2006. [12] Mooney, William K., Jr. “Stabilizing Lebanon: Peacekeeping or Nation-Building.” Parameters 37, no. 3 (2007). [13] Cordesman, Anthony H. The Lessons of the 2006 Israeli-Hezbollah War (Washington D.C.: CSIS, 2007). . [14] Ibid, Mooney, 28. [15] Ibid, Mooney, 35. [16] Ibid, Cordesman, 54. [17] Ibid, Cordesman, 60. [18] Ibid, Cordesman, 30. [19] Meir, Y.B. “Israeli Public Opinion and the Second Lebanon War.” Institute for National Security Studies. https://www.inss.org.il/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/The-Second-Lebanon-War-87-102.pdf. [20] BBC News. “Israel’s ex-PM Ehud Olmert convicted of bribery.” BBC News, March 31, 2014. [21] CBC News. “Israel Buries Soldiers' Bodies Returned by Hezbollah in Prisoner Exchange.” CBC.ca, July 17, 2008. [22] Karon, Tony. “Gilad Shalit and the End of the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process.” Time, October 17, 2011. [23] Bigg, Mathhew Mpoke. “New Gaza cease-fire proposal puts a spotlight on Hamas leader.” The New York Times, June 12, 2024. [24] Ibid, Cordesman, 32. [25] Boxerman, Aaron, Bergman, Ronen, Kingsley, Patrick and Lohr, Steve. “Killing of Nasrallah Pushes Mideast Conflict into New Territory.” The New York Times, September 28, 2024.