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Lebanese Don't Want War with Israel
(Ha'aretz) Zvi Bar'el - In his sermon on Sunday in honor of the new year, Lebanon's Maronite Patriarch Bechara al-Rahi said, "We don't want the war to spread to southern Lebanon. It must be stopped to protect Lebanon's people, their homes and their livelihoods, at a time when they still haven't recovered from the results of the terrible war" of 2006. "We urge that every missile launchpad located among residential homes in Lebanese villages, which are suffering from the destructive Israeli responses, be removed." There are growing fears in Lebanon that another full-fledged war could develop. That would lead to strikes deep within Lebanon and damage to its civilian and economic infrastructure. Other Christian, Druze and Sunni leaders in Lebanon have voiced their concerns, as have the tens of thousands of Lebanese who have evacuated their villages in southern Lebanon and who are liable to lose the entire agricultural year, their main source of income. Amos Hochstein, who is U.S. President Joe Biden's coordinator for global infrastructure and energy security, is supposed to visit Israel and Lebanon this week. His working assumption is that removing disagreements over 13 points along the border claimed by Hizbullah would neutralize its pretexts for continuing its clashes with Israel. But Hizbullah says its attacks on Israel would end once the war in Gaza ends, thereby tying the Lebanese border conflict fully to the Gaza war. This means that even resolving the border dispute wouldn't remove the pretext for Hizbullah's current clashes with Israel.