Lebanon’s Maronite patriarch calls for all parties to adopt ‘active neutrality’

Lebanon’s Maronite Patriarch Bechara Al-Rai stresses that policy of active neutrality would allow Lebanon to build on the good relations it already has with many countries. (AN photo)
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Updated 18 September 2020
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Lebanon’s Maronite patriarch calls for all parties to adopt ‘active neutrality’

  • Says Lebanon has historically been neutral until 1975 when the Cairo Agreement allowed the Palestinians to carry out military operations against Israel
  • Disagrees with Hezbollah’s claim that neutrality would encourage Israeli aggression, or mean that Lebanon could not defend itself

BEIRUT: In an exclusive interview with Arab News on Wednesday, the head of Lebanon’s Maronite church, Bechara Al-Rai, called for all of the many political factions in the country — which has just marked its centenary — to support his call to adopt ‘active neutrality,’ describing it as “part of the Lebanese identity.”

“Lebanon has (historically) been neutral,” the patriarch said. “But since 1975, we have lost our neutrality — first when the Cairo Agreement allowed the Palestinians to carry out military operations against Israel from Lebanese territory, then with the civil war, which led to the emergence of different militias. So, active neutrality is a return to our roots, to our own identity.”

With the exception of Hezbollah, which he said has not expressed a position yet, Al-Rai claimed that no party in Lebanon opposes neutrality, but that “probably a few take advantage of the current situation and are just sitting on the fence.”

Al-Rai disagrees with Hezbollah’s claim that neutrality would encourage Israeli aggression, or mean that Lebanon could not defend itself.

“Neutrality comprises three inseparable and complementary elements,” he said. The first is that Lebanon, because of its size, “has no interest in being part of the conflicts and wars in the region.” The second is that the country’s “mission” is to be a place “where all nations can come together and get along.”

And the third that a Lebanon not “fragmented into several republics” could establish “a strong state, with an army and institutions that can exercise its sovereignty within its territory … and defend itself from any aggression.”

He added: “Hezbollah has its own vested interests that are not necessarily aligned with those of Lebanon.”

The need for unity is urgent, Al-Rai continued. “Today, we are committing suicide. We cannot sacrifice Lebanon for the sake of a person or party, whether it is Hezbollah or others.”

A policy of active neutrality would allow Lebanon to build on the good relations it already has with many countries, Al-Rai believes, but also to forge new international relations.

While he welcomed the recent decisions by the UAE and Bahrain to normalize relations with Israel, he stressed: “I am not saying that (Lebanon) should normalize relations with Israel today,” but added that the roots of the recent deals could be found in an initiative launched at the Arab League Summit in Beirut in 2002.

Al-Rai also took the opportunity to thank the many countries to have provided support to Lebanon since the devastating explosion in Beirut’s port on August 4. “This shows that Lebanon, this small country, is well-cherished.”

But, he added, “Lebanon must live up to this vision of the international and Arab community. It needs to form a government, and its politicians must no longer care about their personal interests, but must put those of Lebanon first.”

He said Lebanon’s politicians should feel “ashamed” that French President Emmanuel Macron “rushed to Lebanon in the aftermath of the double explosion, while no Lebanese politician dared to go to the bedside of the people.”

“Our politicians are now declaring themselves innocent of their responsibilities,” Al-Rai said. “It is as if it was the duty of France or any state to come and help Lebanon ward off the negligence of its political leaders.”

More must be done, Al-Rai said, to ensure that the Lebanese people are able not just to survive in their country, but thrive — and to dissuade so many Lebanese from leaving the country.

“Words are not enough. We use words, principles, patriotism, but this is not enough. They need to eat, to work, to be able to build their future and achieve their dreams. The responsibility falls on politicians. Economic conditions in the country need to be improved. The Lebanese must be able to live with dignity and find a job. We must also ensure their safety. It is not okay to have all these guns all over the place in people’s hands, shooting and killing for whatever reason. Life has value,” he said.

“Therefore, we need a neutral state, a strong state imposing its sovereignty throughout the country, ensuring the security of all its citizens, providing them a normal economic and social life,” he continued. “This is the neutral state that we are advocating — the state as it was before it tumbled.”


Homes smashed, help slashed: no respite for returning Syrians

Updated 7 sec ago
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Homes smashed, help slashed: no respite for returning Syrians

The community center, funded by UNHCR, offers vital services that families cannot get elsewhere in a country scarred by war
“We have no stability. We are scared and we need support,” said Fatima Al-Abbiad, a mother of four

DAMASCUS: Around a dozen Syrian women sat in a circle at a UN-funded center in Damascus, happy to share stories about their daily struggles, but their bonding was overshadowed by fears that such meet-ups could soon end due to international aid cuts.

The community center, funded by the United Nations’ refugee agency (UNHCR), offers vital services that families cannot get elsewhere in a country scarred by war, with an economy broken by decades of mismanagement and Western sanctions.

“We have no stability. We are scared and we need support,” said Fatima Al-Abbiad, a mother of four. “There are a lot of problems at home, a lot of tension, a lot of violence because of the lack of income.”

But the center’s future now hangs in the balance as the UNHCR has had to cut down its activities in Syria because of the international aid squeeze caused by US President Donald Trump’s decision to halt foreign aid.

The cuts will close nearly half of the UNHCR centers in Syria and the widespread services they provide — from educational support and medical equipment to mental health and counselling sessions — just as the population needs them the most. There are hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees returning home after the fall of Bashar Assad last year.

UNHCR’s representative in Syria, Gonzalo Vargas Llosa, said the situation was a “disaster” and that the agency would struggle to help returning refugees.

“I think that we have been forced — here I use very deliberately the word forced — to adopt plans which are more modest than we would have liked,” he told Context/Thomson Reuters Foundation in Damascus.

“It has taken us years to build that extraordinary network of support, and almost half of them are going to be closed exactly at the moment of opportunity for refugee and IDPs (internally displaced people) return.”

BIG LOSS
A UNHCR spokesperson told the Thomson Reuters Foundation that the agency would shut down around 42 percent of its 122 community centers in Syria in June, which will deprive some 500,000 people of assistance and reduce aid for another 600,000 that benefit from the remaining centers.

The UNHCR will also cut 30 percent of its staff in Syria, said the spokesperson, while the livelihood program that supports small businesses will shrink by 20 percent unless it finds new funding.

Around 100 people visit the center in Damascus each day, said Mirna Mimas, a supervisor with GOPA-DERD, the church charity that runs the center with UNHCR.

Already the center’s educational programs, which benefited 900 children last year, are at risk, said Mimas.

Nour Huda Madani, 41, said she had been “lucky” to receive support for her autistic child at the center.

“They taught me how to deal with him,” said the mother of five.

Another visitor, Odette Badawi, said the center was important for her well-being after she returned to Syria five years ago, having fled to Lebanon when war broke out in Syria in 2011.

“(The center) made me feel like I am part of society,” said the 68-year-old.

Mimas said if the center closed, the loss to the community would be enormous: “If we must tell people we are leaving, I will weep before they do,” she said

UNHCR HELP ‘SELECTIVE’
Aid funding for Syria had already been declining before Trump’s seismic cuts to the US Agency for International Development this year and cuts by other countries to international aid budgets.

But the new blows come at a particularly bad time.

Since former president Assad was ousted by Islamist rebels last December, around 507,000 Syrians have returned from neighboring countries and around 1.2 million people displaced inside the country went back home, according to UN estimates.

Llosa said, given the aid cuts, UNHCR would have only limited scope to support the return of some of the 6 million Syrians who fled the country since 2011.

“We will need to help only those that absolutely want to go home and simply do not have any means to do so,” Llosa said. “That means that we will need to be very selective as opposed to what we wanted, which was to be expansive.”

ESSENTIAL SUPPORT
Ayoub Merhi Hariri had been counting on support from the livelihood program to pay off the money he borrowed to set up a business after he moved back to Syria at the end of 2024.

After 12 years in Lebanon, he returned to Daraa in southwestern Syria to find his house destroyed — no doors, no windows, no running water, no electricity.

He moved in with relatives and registered for livelihood support at a UN-backed center in Daraa to help him start a spice manufacturing business to support his family and ill mother.

While his business was doing well, he said he would struggle to repay his creditors the 20 million Syrian pounds ($1,540) he owed them now that his livelihood support had been cut.

“Thank God (the business) was a success, and it is generating an income for us to live off,” he said.

“But I can’t pay back the debt,” he said, fearing the worst. “I’ll have to sell everything.”

Netanyahu admits Israel supporting anti-Hamas armed group in Gaza

Updated 06 June 2025
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Netanyahu admits Israel supporting anti-Hamas armed group in Gaza

  • Israeli and Palestinian media have reported that the group Israel has been working with is part of a local Bedouin tribe led by Yasser Abu Shabab

JERUSALEM: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu admitted that Israel is supporting an armed group in Gaza that opposes the militant group Hamas, following comments by a former minister that Israel had transferred weapons to it.
Israeli and Palestinian media have reported that the group Israel has been working with is part of a local Bedouin tribe led by Yasser Abu Shabab.
The European Council on Foreign Relations (EFCR) think tank describes Abu Shabab as the leader of a “criminal gang operating in the Rafah area that is widely accused of looting aid trucks.”
Knesset member and ex-defense minister Avigdor Liberman had told the Kan public broadcaster that the government, at Netanyahu’s direction, was “giving weapons to a group of criminals and felons.”
“What did Liberman leak? That security sources activated a clan in Gaza that opposes Hamas? What is bad about that?” Netanyahu said in a video posted to social media on Thursday.
“It is only good, it is saving lives of Israeli soldiers.”
Michael Milshtein, an expert on Palestinian affairs at the Moshe Dayan Center in Tel Aviv, told AFP that the Abu Shabab clan was part of a Bedouin tribe that spans across the border between Gaza and Egypt’s Sinai peninsula.
Some of the tribe’s members, he said, were involved in “all kinds of criminal activities, drug smuggling, and things like that.”


Milshtein said that Abu Shabab had spent time in prison in Gaza and that his clan chiefs had recently denounced him as an Israeli “collaborator and a gangster.”
“It seems that actually the Shabak (Israeli security agency) or the (military) thought it was a wonderful idea to turn this militia, gang actually, into a proxy, to give them weapons and money and shelter” from army operations, Milshtein said.
He added that Hamas killed four members of the gang days ago.
The ECFR said Abu Shabab was “reported to have been previously jailed by Hamas for drug smuggling. His brother is said to have been killed by Hamas during a crackdown against the group’s attacks on UN aid convoys.”
Israel regularly accuses Hamas, with which it has been at war for nearly 20 months, of looting aid convoys in Gaza.
Hamas said the group had “chosen betrayal and theft as their path” and called on civilians to oppose them.
Hamas, which has ruled Gaza for nearly two decades, said it had evidence of “clear coordination between these looting gangs, collaborators with the occupation (Israel), and the enemy army itself in the looting of aid and the fabrication of humanitarian crises that deepen the suffering of” Palestinians.
The Popular Forces, as Abu Shabab’s group calls itself, said on Facebook it had “never been, and will never be, a tool of the occupation.”
“Our weapons are simple, outdated, and came through the support of our own people,” it added.
Milshtein called Israel’s decision to arm a group such as Abu Shabab “a fantasy, not something that you can really describe as a strategy.”
“I really hope it will not end with catastrophe,” he said.


Gaza marks the start of Eid Al-Adha with outdoor prayers among the rubble and food growing ever scarcer

Updated 06 June 2025
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Gaza marks the start of Eid Al-Adha with outdoor prayers among the rubble and food growing ever scarcer

  • Israeli offensive has destroyed large parts of Gaza and displaced around 90 percent of its population of roughly 2 million Palestinians
  • After blocking all food and aid from entering Gaza for more than two months, Israel began allowing a trickle of supplies to enter

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip: Palestinians across the war-ravaged Gaza Strip marked the start of one of Islam’s most important holidays with prayers outside destroyed mosques and homes early Friday, with little hope the war with Israel will end soon.

With much of Gaza in rubble, men and children were forced to hold the traditional Eid Al-Adha prayers in the open air and with food supplies dwindling, families were having to make do with what they could scrape together for the three-day feast.

“This is the worst feast that the Palestinian people have experienced because of the unjust war against the Palestinian people,” said Kamel Emran after attending prayers in the southern city of Khan Younis. “There is no food, no flour, no shelter, no mosques, no homes, no mattresses ... The conditions are very, very harsh.”

The Islamic holiday begins on the 10th day of the Islamic lunar month of Dhul-Hijja, during the Hajj season in Saudi Arabia. For the second year, Muslims in Gaza were not able to travel to Saudi Arabia to perform the traditional pilgrimage.

The war broke out on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas-led militants launched a surprise attack on Israel, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted 251 hostages. They are still holding 56 hostages, around a third of them believed to be alive, after most of the rest were released in ceasefire agreements or other deals. Israeli forces have rescued eight living hostages from Gaza and recovered dozens of bodies.

Since then, Israel has killed more than 54,000 Palestinians in its military campaign, primarily women and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry which does not distinguish between civilians or combatants in its figures.

The offensive has destroyed large parts of Gaza and displaced around 90 percent of its population of roughly 2 million Palestinians.

After blocking all food and aid from entering Gaza for more than two months, Israel began allowing a trickle of supplies to enter for the UN several weeks ago. But the UN says it has been unable to distribute much of the aid because of Israeli military restrictions on movements and because roads that the military designates for its trucks to use are unsafe and vulnerable to looters.

The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome said Thursday that Gaza’s people are projected to fall into acute food insecurity by September, with nearly 500,000 people experiencing extreme food deprivation, leading to malnutrition and starvation.

“This means the risk of famine is really touching the whole of the Gaza Strip,” Rein Paulson, director of the FAO office of emergencies and resilience, said in an interview.

Over the past two weeks, shootings have erupted nearly daily in the Gaza Strip in the vicinity of new hubs where desperate Palestinians are being directed to collect food. Witnesses say nearby Israeli troops have opened fire, and more than 80 people have been killed according to Gaza hospital officials.

Israel has accused Hamas of stealing aid and trying to block it from reaching Palestinians, and has said soldiers fired warning shots or at individuals approaching its troops in some cases.

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a newly formed group of mainly American contractors that Israel wants to use to replace humanitarian groups in Gaza that distribute aid in coordination with the UN, said Friday that all its distribution centers were closed for the day due to the ongoing violence.

It urged people to stay away for their own safety, and said it would make an announcement later as to when they would resume distributing humanitarian aid.


Lebanese army warns Israeli airstrikes might force it to freeze cooperation with ceasefire committee

Updated 06 June 2025
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Lebanese army warns Israeli airstrikes might force it to freeze cooperation with ceasefire committee

  • The Lebanese army said it started coordinating with the committee observing the ceasefire after Israel’s military issued its warning and sent patrols to the areas that were to be struck to search them

BEIRUT: The Lebanese army condemned Friday Israel’s airstrikes on suburbs of Beirut, warning that such attacks are weakening the role of Lebanon’s armed forces that might eventually suspend cooperation with the committee monitoring the truce that ended the Israel-Hezbollah war.
The army statement came hours after the Israeli military struck several buildings in Beirut’s southern suburbs that it said held underground facilities used by Hezbollah for drone production. The strikes, preceded by an Israeli warning to evacuate several buildings, came on the eve of Eid Al-Adha, a Muslim holiday.
The Lebanese army said it started coordinating with the committee observing the ceasefire after Israel’s military issued its warning and sent patrols to the areas that were to be struck to search them. It added that Israel rejected the suggestion.
The US-led committee that has been supervising the ceasefire that ended the 14-month Israel-Hezbollah war in November is made up of Lebanon, Israel, France, the US and the UN peacekeeping forces in Lebanon known as UNIFIL.
“The Israeli enemy violations of the deal and its refusal to respond to the committee is weakening the role of the committee and the army,” the Lebanese army said in its statement. It added such attacks by Israel could lead the army to freeze its cooperation with the committee “when it comes to searching posts.”
Since the Israel-Hezbollah war ended, Israel has carried out nearly daily airstrikes on parts of Lebanon targeting Hezbollah operatives. Beirut’s southern suburbs were struck on several occasions since then.
The conflict between Hezbollah and Israel began on Oct. 8, 2023, when the Lebanese militant group began launching rockets across the border in support of its ally, Hamas, in Gaza. Israel responded with airstrikes and shelling and the two were quickly locked in a low-level conflict that continued for nearly a year before escalating into full-scale war in September 2024.
It killed more than 4,000 people in Lebanon, including hundreds of civilians, while the Lebanese government said in April that Israeli strikes had killed another 190 people and wounded 485 since the ceasefire agreement.
There has been increasing pressure on Hezbollah, both domestic and international, to give up its remaining arsenal, but officials with the group have said they will not do so until Israel stops its airstrikes and withdraws from five points it is still occupying along the border in southern Lebanon.
Hezbollah says that it has ended its military presence along the border with Israel south of the Litani River, in accordance with terms of the ceasefire deal.


Israel warns of more Lebanon strikes if Hezbollah not disarmed

Updated 28 min 38 sec ago
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Israel warns of more Lebanon strikes if Hezbollah not disarmed

  • The strikes came around an hour after Israel’s military spokesman issued an evacuation call
  • “There will be no calm in Beirut, and no order or stability in Lebanon, without security for the State of Israel,” Katz said

BEIRUT: Israel warned Friday that it will keep striking Lebanon until militant group Hezbollah has been disarmed, hours after it hit south Beirut in what Lebanese leaders called a major violation of a November ceasefire.

An Israeli military evacuation call issued ahead of Thursday’s strikes sent huge numbers of residents of the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital, long a bastion of Iran-backed Hezbollah, fleeing for their lives.

The attack on what the Israeli military said was Hezbollah’s underground drone factories came on the eve of Eid Al-Adha, one of the main religious festivals of the Muslim calendar.

The strikes came around an hour after Israel’s military spokesman issued an evacuation call, and sent plumes of smoke billowing over Beirut.

The attack came six months after a ceasefire agreement was sealed in a bid to end hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel.

“There will be no calm in Beirut, and no order or stability in Lebanon, without security for the State of Israel,” Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a statement.

“Agreements must be honored and if you do not do what is required, we will continue to act, and with great force.”

Under the ceasefire brokered by the United States and France, Lebanon committed to disarming Hezbollah, which was once reputed to be more heavily armed than the state itself.

Hezbollah sparked months of deadly hostilities by launching cross-border attacks on northern Israel in what it described as an act of solidarity with its Palestinian ally Hamas following its October 7, 2023 attack.

The war left Hezbollah massively weakened, with a string of top commanders including its longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah killed and weapons caches dotted around Lebanon incinerated.

Israel has carried out repeated strikes on south Lebanon since the truce, but strikes targeting Beirut’s southern suburbs have been rare.

“Following Hezbollah’s extensive use of UAVs as a central component of its terrorist attacks on the State of Israel, the terrorist organization is operating to increase production of UAVs for the next war,” the military said, calling the activities “a blatant violation of the understandings between Israel and Lebanon.”

Under the truce, Hezbollah fighters were to withdraw north of the Litani river, about 30 kilometers (20 miles) from the Israeli border, and dismantle any remaining military infrastructure to its south.

Israel was to withdraw all its troops from Lebanon but it has kept some in five areas it deems “strategic.”

The Lebanese army has been deploying in the south and removing Hezbollah infrastructure, with Prime Minister Nawaf Salam saying Thursday that it had dismantled “more than 500 military positions and arms depots” in the area.

Following the strike on Thursday, Lebanon’s leaders accused Israel of a “flagrant” ceasefire violation by launching strikes ahead of the Eid Al-Adha holiday.

President Joseph Aoun voiced “firm condemnation of the Israeli aggression” and “flagrant violation of an international accord... on the eve of a sacred religious festival.”

The prime minister too issued a statement condemning the strikes as a violation of Lebanese sovereignty.

One resident of southern Beirut described grabbing her children and fleeing her home after receiving an ominous warning before the strikes.

“I got a phone call from a stranger who said he was from the Israeli army,” said the woman, Violette, who declined to give her last name.

Israel also issued an evacuation warning for the Lebanese village of Ain Qana, around 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the border.

The Israeli military then launched a strike on a building there that it alleged was a Hezbollah base, according to Lebanon’s official National News Agency.