Maronite Patriarch’s Unheeded Warning: Lebanon Must Remain ‘Neutral’ to Be Saved From Hunger and Poverty

The story of Maronite Patriarch Bechara Boutros Al-Rai’s unheeded 2020 warning is here.

Lebanon needs to stay neutral to be saved from hunger and poverty, its senior Christian cleric said on Wednesday, urging Lebanese to keep out of conflicts in Arab countries but denying he was referring specifically to the Iranian-backed Hezbollah.

Lebanon faces financial ruin. Its debt-to-GDP ratio is 160%, the third highest in the world. The official rate for the Lebanese pound is now 89,582 to the dollar. The unemployment rate is declining, but is still above 13%. No one wants to invest.

The economy is in free fall. Years of mismanagement and corruption explain this degringolade, and Hezbollah has played a large part. The Patriarch may deny that he was “referring specifically” to Hezbollah, but that only means he was referring “not only” to Hezbollah.

For Hezbollah is responsible for much of what ails Lebanon’s economy.

First, Hezbollah started a war with Israel in 2006 that devastated much of the country’s infrastructure, for the terror group hid its weapons throughout civilian areas which, in turn, were bombed by the Israelis. Billions of dollars of damage was done; not all of it has, even today, been repaired. Now it looks as if it is about to go to war with Israel again.

Second, Hezbollah now has a much more extensive armory, of 140,000 missiles and rockets, which it has hidden not just all over southern Lebanon, but throughout Beirut, in high schools, hospitals, restaurants, stores, ensuring that in case of a new war, these will all be attacked and, in many cases, destroyed by Israeli bombardments. This makes both Lebanese and foreign investors, too, more reluctant to invest in the country given that, they know, if Hezbollah insists on provoking Israel, much of it will likely be destroyed.

Third, Hezbollah has essentially taken over the Lebanese government, not only through its own members who now sit in the government, but also through non-Shi’a collaborators with the terror group, such as the Maronite former President Michel Aoun, who did Hezbollah’s bidding. It is not a force for reform, but for immobility. It has no desire to replace the current government, which it controls, with a government of capable technocrats unbeholden to Hezbollah, who might be able to right the listing economy.

Fourth, Hezbollah has defended the government – that it controls — against the ever-larger number of Lebanese protesting against the mismanagement and corruption of the “permanent government.” It does this by violently suppressing the peaceful protesters. It has thereby earned the rage not only of Christians and Sunnis, but of many Shi’a as well.

The Gulf Arabs began to reduce their aid to Lebanon ever since the Sunni Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, who was close to the Saudis, was assassinated by Hezbollah and that aid has decreased pari passu with the rise of Hezbollah. Naturally the Gulf Arabs, whose mortal enemy is Iran, aren’t about to aid Lebanon as long as it is ruled by a terror group allied to, and doing the bidding of, their worst enemy, the Islamic Republic.

In his last two sermons, Rai made comments that were widely interpreted as criticism of both Hezbollah and its ally Aoun. On Wednesday, Rai said his comments had been misunderstood.

Rai’s comments were not “misunderstood.” He had taken aim at Hezbollah, but he apparently decided to tone things down, including his insistence that his previous remarks had been “misunderstood.”

Rai holds sway in Lebanon as head of the Maronite church, from which the head of state must be drawn under sectarian power-sharing arrangements.

“We will not be saved from the state we are in today – the economic problem, poverty and hunger – other than through neutrality,” Rai said told reporters after the meeting.

Lebanon should not get into “political or military struggles or alliances” in the Arab world….

What did the Patriarch mean? In the first place, he didn’t want Hezbollah to drag Lebanon into another war with Israel – or rather, did not want Lebanese to pay the price of a war between Hezbollah and Israel. He didn’t want Lebanon, which had a quiet border with Israel for several decades until the PLO arrived in force, to ever again be a theatre of conflict between Arabs and Israelis. To this end, he didn’t say – as he had before – that all sectarian armed groups must be disarmed. But such disarming is necessary if Lebanon is not to involve itself with “political or military struggles or alliances” in the Arab world. That demand for disarming is directed primarily at Hezbollah, as the once-powerful Christian militias in Lebanon now scarcely exist. The Patriarch would like the Lebanese Army to be strengthened, in order to reassert itself as the only legitimate military presence in Lebanon.

In the second place, the Patriarch didn’t want Lebanon to be involved in the larger Sunni-Shi’a conflict in the Middle East. He knew that Hezbollah’s power would prevent Lebanon from joining the anti-Iranian Arab coalition, but that’s as far as he would have its influence go. Patriarch Rai did not want the Lebanese to be cowed into actually embracing Hezbollah and with it, its master Iran.

Rai also warned that poverty and unemployment were leaving the door open for foreign interference in Lebanon, without giving details.

What would a future Lebanon look like if Patriarch Rai had his way? First of all, it would have all of the sectarian forces disarmed, and the Lebanese National Army would be the only military force on Lebanese soil. Hezbollah could remain, but only as a political party representing the sectarian interests of some – not all – the Shi’a.

Hezbollah would either have to turn over its huge weapons armory to the Lebanese army, or remove that armory from Lebanon altogether, and send it to Syria or even, possibly, back to Iran.

The Lebanese government would no longer consist of the same small circle of people who have been running the country into the ground, during years of misrule, mismanagement, and corruption. Instead, technocrats in the government would run the economy. Having curbed the power of Hezbollah, the Lebanese government could once again attempt to receive aid from the Gulf Arabs, for whom Hezbollah had been anathema, and who should be well pleased at the changes that have curbed the terror group’s power. Western governments, especially the United States and France, which in the past, before the rise of Hezbollah, had supported Lebanon, would likely be again willing to aid a Lebanese state run by technocrats, and with Hezbollah no longer a military threat.

Lebanon would from now on have nothing to do with the Arab-Israeli conflict. It never was comfortable being involved – many of its Christians harbored pro-Israel sympathies – from the very beginning. There were only a few thousand Lebanese troops who fought in the 1948-49 war, though some Syrian fighters invaded Israel from Lebanese soil. And no Lebanese took part in the 1967 or 1973 wars. Hezbollah’s 2006 war with Israel, which Lebanon did not want, brought the country nothing but grief, with great damage to its infrastructure. The Patriarch would no doubt like Lebanon’s border with Israel to be as calm as it had been from 1949 to the 1970s, when Palestinians in Lebanon began their cross-border attacks.

With technocrats running the Lebanese economy and much of the rest of the government, too, with financial aid from the Gulf Arabs renewed, and aid likely arriving from the Americans and the French as well, with Hezbollah disarmed and its vast armory of missiles either destroyed, or handed over to the Lebanese National Army, or – most likely – removed to Syria or Iran, with Lebanon steering clear of the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the Sunni-Shi’a conflict, and the assorted civil wars now tearing Syria, Libya, and Yemen apart, the country has a chance not only to pull itself out of an economic abyss but, just possibly, as it once did, even to thrive.