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Lebanon's Maronite Christians Want No Part of Hizbullah's Wars with Israel

(The National-Abu Dhabi) Michael Young - The Maronite Patriarchate hosted a "spiritual summit" last week, inviting the religious leaders of Lebanon's different communities. Representatives of the Shiite community boycotted the session, which reaffirmed the growing rift between a number of Lebanon's Maronite Christian and Shiite community leaders. For many Maronites, Hizbullah's hegemony over Lebanon, its determination to bring in a Maronite president of its own choosing, and its ability to provoke a conflict with Israel without bothering to consult with the Lebanese state or its sectarian counterparts, have all provoked a questioning of their country's sectarian social contract. If Lebanon emerges from a war with Israel in ruins, Christians will look for ways to use this as leverage to push for a more decentralized system, arguing that if Hizbullah wants to fight Israel every few years and as a consequence destroy the country, then it can do so on its own. The mood in the Christian community is already hostile enough to the present sectarian imbalance that communal leaders will use a war as an opportunity to better organize support among resentful Christians for a profound overhauling of the political system. A war with Israel will almost certainly sharpen Christian bitterness and a sense that Christians no longer feel at home in Lebanon. The writer is the senior editor at the Carnegie Middle East Centre in Beirut.
2024-07-07 00:00:00
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