Archbishop: War between Israel and Gaza causes conflict in Lebanon

As violence continues in the war between Israel and Hamas, neighboring Lebanon is also suffering.

Israel has been fighting the Shiite Islamic Hezbollah party since war broke out with Hamas in the Gaza Strip shortly after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, killing 1,200 Israelis and taking over 200 others hostage.

Hezbollah supported Hamas, which led to a series of Israeli attacks on Hezbollah-controlled areas in Lebanon.

Earlier this week, Hezbollah released nine minutes of daylight drone footage of the Israeli port city of Haifa, showing which civilian and military areas it could attack.

In response, Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz responded with a post on X in which he stated that an attack would not be tolerated.

“Nasrallah today boasts of having filmed the ports of Haifa, which are operated by international companies from China and India, and threatens to attack them,” he writes.

“We are on the verge of making a decision to change the rules against Hezbollah and Lebanon. In a full-scale war, Hezbollah will be destroyed and Lebanon will be hit hard. The State of Israel will pay a price for this on the front and on the home front, but with a strong and united nation and the full power of the Israel Defense Forces, we will restore security to the people of the north,” Fatz continues.

Maronite Archbishop Charbel Abdallah of Tyre told Aid to the Church in Need (ACN): “We are in a state of war.”

He told the Vatican-backed aid group that most of the people who had fled his region – which is close to the border – to Beirut or further north “have now returned home because they did not have enough money and the small houses of their relatives who had taken them in were not enough to accommodate so many people.”

As a result of the war in the Gaza Strip, rocket attacks occur daily in southern Lebanon. Areas near the Israeli border are particularly affected.

In the ten parishes near the Israeli border, which make up almost the entire Maronite Archdiocese of Tyre, 70 percent of church members have now returned.

“However, the communities of Alma el Chaeb and Quzah are still almost empty because they lie entirely in the area of ​​airstrikes; a large part of the houses there have been completely destroyed,” said Abdallah.

ACN and the local church are helping local people who are still suffering from the terrible financial crisis of 2019.

“The eyes of the world are on the war in Gaza, but the media rarely reports on the fact that it has led to an armed conflict in southern Lebanon,” says Marielle Boutros, ACN project coordinator in Lebanon.

“Like the people of Gaza, this is not the first war that the people of southern Lebanon have had to experience. They can no longer bear the noise of the rockets and are traumatized. They really need our prayers,” she said.

Abdallah said he was visiting war-affected communities, even though bombs had already hit nearby twice during his visits.

“We try to maintain the spiritual life of the parishes by celebrating all the usual feasts, be they the feasts of the liturgical year, the feasts of the patron saints or First Communion,” said the archbishop.

“After the celebrations, we listen to people to see what their needs are and to help them with our modest means,” he said.

Abdallah said these visits “encourage people enormously; they feel that the Church has not abandoned them.”

Boutros said she was deeply impressed by the courage and loyalty of ACN’s many project partners in southern Lebanon.

“None of them – neither bishops, priests, brothers or nuns – have left the region in the face of constant danger. They feel responsible to stay with the people in their distress and to offer them support and comfort,” she said.

She noted that even the priests of the two communities of Alma el Chaeb and Quzah – which are often located near the air strikes – are still on site.