The National Center for Scientific Research in Lebanon announced the extent of the destruction caused by Israeli aggressive operations during the war, as the number of damaged and destroyed housing units exceeded 50,000. The center indicated that “within 46 days of war, there are 17,756 destroyed housing units and 32,668 damaged housing units.”
In an article in Al-Diyar, Joseph Farah wrote, quoting Dr. Pierre Al-Khoury, a specialist in political economy: “The losses are estimated at about 7 billion dollars, and this reflects an initial approach that is limited to visible and quickly quantifiable damage, while the breadth of the military operations, their geographical reach, and the high intensity of targeting, indicate that this number falls below the actual level of damage.”
Al-Khoury also explained, “The comparison with the 2024 war, in which the cost of reconstruction was estimated at about 11 billion dollars, with total losses ranging between 14 and 15 billion dollars, leads to a systematic conclusion that the severity of the shock in 2026 generates an upward curve of losses that exceeds the previous one, as a result of its coincidence with an exhausted economy that has already suffered from a long-term contraction since 2019.”
He added, “The total estimate of the economic cost cannot be separated from the temporal accumulation of crises, as adding the losses of 2024 and 2026 places the economy facing a burden ranging between 20 and 25 billion dollars for reconstruction only, without taking into account the cost of economic recovery and restructuring of productive sectors.”
For his part, Maroun Daher, a member of the Syndicate of Travel and Tourism Office Owners, told Al-Anbaa Kuwait, “The travel sector has incurred hundreds of millions of dollars in material losses since the 2024 war until today. It is exposed to one crisis after another and can hardly catch its breath until it suffocates again,” stressing that “this sector is going through a very bad situation today. If there is a new round of war, this will inevitably be a fatal blow to the sector.”
Daher pointed out that travel ticket returns due to the war are estimated at millions of dollars. He added that travel agencies usually plan for the summer season in advance by pre-booking and paying for tickets, hotels, etc., but the suspension of summer plans and airlines as a result of the war led to refunding the price of tickets and closing some travel offices (there are 1,200 offices in Lebanon), or dismissing employees or reducing salaries, which is an extremely dangerous situation.
The question that arises: Does this mean that the summer season, which travel agency owners and workers in the tourism sector rely on to achieve savings in hard currency and supply the national economy with no less than $7 billion, has “flew” and become news?
