Maronite leader lays out road map to unite country and end crisis
Lebanon’s influential Maronite Church is pressing ahead with a lobbying campaign to shield the country against the spillover of regional conflicts.
The initiative is being launched despite opposition from Hezbollah.
The effort builds on Patriarch Bechara Rai’s call for a UN-sponsored conference to “save” Lebanon from its worst crisis since the end of the civil war in 1990.
The small Mediterranean nation has been without a government since the explosion that shook Beirut last August and deepened the country’s economic and financial problems.
Seven months later, the country’s leaders continue to quarrel over the coming government’s composition. Their dispute takes place against a backdrop of rising tensions between Iran and its regional adversaries, led by the US.
Politicians’ failure to break the deadlock, despite the economic urgency, justified the call for an international conference, the patriarch told thousands of supporters who gathered this weekend at Bkirki, the seat of the Maronite Church.
“The patriarch’s initiative reflects the will of the people,” former minister Sejaan Azzi told The National. Mr Azzi, an adviser to the patriarch, said Bkirki was currently looking into the formation of a non-partisan working group to rally support for the initiative, domestically and overseas.
“The patriarch’s initiative laid out a road map to steer Lebanon out of its crisis … It is now up to the parties that share Bkirki’s views to take action,” Mr Azzi said.
Few, however, expect the initiative to yield immediate results in a country where Hezbollah and its allies dominate the political scene and their rivals remain deeply divided.
Former MP Mustapha Allouch, a member of Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri’s Future Movement, said his party shared the patriarch’s vision. Mr Allouch wants Lebanon to embrace neutrality in line with the 2012 Baabda Declaration.
The declaration, which garnered the support of Mr Hariri and his allies at the time, resulted from arduous negotiations between Lebanon’s rival camps to distance the country from regional conflicts.
However, almost a decade later, Hezbollah, which the US classifies as a terrorist organisation, continues to fight alongside Syrian regime forces and dictate Lebanon’s foreign policy.
The Iran-backed movement’s grip on the government has strengthened, with the election of an allied president and a pro-Hezbollah majority in parliament further undermining Lebanon’s ties with traditional Arab allies.
Mr Allouch, who welcomed the patriarch’s initiative, said his appeal for an international conference should be discussed. One aim would be to steer clear of confrontation with Hezbollah.
The party has criticised calls to internationalise the Lebanese crisis, saying they are a breach of sovereignty and an invitation to potential occupation and future conflicts.
But Mr Allouch says Lebanon’s crisis has already been internationalised, as demonstrated by the French-led initiative to end the political deadlock. The initiative unveiled by President Emmanuel Macron shortly after the Beirut blast that killed over 200 people and destroyed thousands of properties across the capital, called for the formation of a cabinet of experts. The non-partisan cabinet initiative would be committed to reforms in exchange for international financial support.
Mr Macron’s appeal, however, has fallen on deaf ears as Lebanon’s political leaders traded accusations about derailing the French initiative, which Mr Azzi says appears to be on hold pending the outcome of talks between Iran and the West.
The political paralysis that continues to engulf Lebanon, however, does not signal the failure of Patriarch Rai’s campaign, former MP Fares Souaid told The National.
Mr Souaid, a former prominent member of the nowdefunct March 14 alliance that led the campaign for Syria’s withdrawal from Lebanon in 2005, likened Bkirki’s current initiative to the early days of the movement led by the Church in 2000.
The movement, then led by late patriarch Nasrallah Sfeir following the withdrawal of Israeli troops from South Lebanon, eventually gave birth to the March 14 coalition that emerged following prime minister Rafik Hariri’s assassination.
With US and international backing, the alliance eventually succeeded in forcing the withdrawal of Syria’s forces from Lebanon, marking the end of decades of Syrian hegemony.
Like the movement led by his predecessor, Patriarch Rai’s initiative lays the groundwork for a political movement that aims to preserve Lebanon as a multicultural entity, Mr Souaid said.
Mr Souaid invited the country’s Muslim leaders to join hands with the patriarch to give a national dimension to the initiative, which has the 1989 power-sharing Taif Accord at heart.
Mr Souaid said the country’s leaders must now choose between upholding the agreement that ended the civil war and cemented Lebanon’s role as a model of pluralism or to seek another compromise deal with Hezbollah.