Patriarch Rai blasts Hezbollah over the murder of UNIFIL member and bullying Christians in south Lebanon

Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rai on Sunday blasted the Iranian backed Hezbollah militant group without naming it over two recent issues.

Assassination of the Irish soldier

He voiced deep grief over “the assassination of the Irish soldier three days ago,”

He said that this UNIFIL peacekeeper “who came to Lebanon to protect the peace of the South has been martyred by a hatred bullet that assassinated him.”

“It’s about time, and it has long been overdue, that the state put its hand on every unruly and illegitimate weapon,” al-Rai stresses , in his Sunday Mass sermon, in reference to the assassination by Hezbollah supporters of the Irish peacemaker

The Lebanese state “should implement Resolution 1701 in text and spirit, because so far its implementation has been selective, arbitrary and confined to the decision of the de facto forces,” al-Rai added , in an apparent swipe at Hezbollah and its weapons.

Bullying Rmesh residents

He also criticized Hezbollah without naming it, over bullying the the residents of the predominantly Christian southern border town of Rmeish

The residents have been decrying “violations against their land and bulldozing and construction activities by influential parties in the area.”

Rai’s comments come after several residents in the southern town of Rmeish described how the Hezbollah backed Green Without Borders organization bulldozed vast tracts of land, removed trees, built structures, and dug with heavy equipment in forests belonging to the Rmeish people.

LBCI reported that one of its reporters went to investigate the situation and quoted a resident of Rmeish telling the organization’s youth, “The Israelis did not do to us what the Green Without Borders organization is doing “

LBC quoted Hanna el-Amil, one of the landowners as saying “our people paid a very expensive price for our land during the Ottoman period; they paid with their blood’.”He said

El-Amil was also quoted by LBCI as saying : “this is our land, which we inherited from our dads and grandfathers, and we will safeguard it at all costs, as well as our commitment to maintaining good neighborly relations.”

The question is El Amal added, “Does anyone have the right to dispose of land without the owners’ permission?

Al-Rai concluded his was by calling on security agencies to “carry out their duties in protecting the properties of our sons and reassuring them.”

Security agencies must “remove violations immediately, withdraw the elements who are alien to the town and put an end to all the practices and breaches that harm coexistence,” the patriarch urged.

News Agencies