The Media Line: Caught Between Conflicts, Lebanon’s Christians Resist Displacement and Division 

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Caught Between Conflicts, Lebanon’s Christians Resist Displacement and Division

Israel has increased its attacks on Christian-dominated areas as a way to discourage Lebanese Christians from supporting their Shia neighbors

By Taylor Thomas/The Media Line  

[Beirut] – In 1926, the Maronite patriarch of Lebanon, Elias Peter Hoayek, wrote a letter to the French minister of foreign affairs, defining his country’s relationship with its Christian citizens under the French Mandate. “The original idea that served as a basis for the establishment of the Lebanese state was to make it into a refuge for all the Christians of the Orient and an abode of undivided fidelity to France,” he said, referring to a promise that would last almost two more decades.

Six years later, in 1932, Lebanon conducted a census. The results showed that within the country’s constellation of different religious groups, a slim majority of the population comprised Maronite Christians. That almost one-hundred-year-old census is the last official census ever conducted in the cedar-filled country. Still today, this census shapes the Lebanese political system.

However, Lebanon no longer has a Christian majority. Unofficial statistics show that only 32 percent of the Lebanese population follows Christianity. In the last century, Islam has been on the rise in Lebanon and is now practiced by over two-thirds of the population.

Lebanon has 18 officially recognized religious groups. They include five Muslim groups (Shia, Sunni, Druze, Alawite, and Ismaili); 12 Christian groups (Maronite, Greek Orthodox, Greek Catholic, Armenian Catholic, Armenian Orthodox, Syriac Orthodox, Syriac Catholic, Assyrian, Chaldean, Copt, evangelical Protestant, and Roman Catholic); and Jews.

In general, all of the country’s religious sects have found ways to live together and respect each other.

Lebanese Christians are concentrated in areas east of the capital, Beirut, along the northern coast in the mountains of Mount Lebanon, and in some villages in the south. Thousands of Christians used to live in towns sandwiched between their Muslim-Shia neighbors. However, throughout the past two months, despite Israel’s war being with Hezbollah, the Christians in some of these areas have not been spared the constant Israeli aerial bombings and ground invasions.

As a result, many Christians in southern Lebanon have witnessed the destruction of their towns and have been forced to flee their homes. This is despite their insistence on maintaining neutrality after Hezbollah began launching rockets from southern Lebanon into Israel on Oct. 8, 2023, a day after Gaza-based Hamas militants attacked southern Israel.

Since then, southern Lebanese Christians have been resigned to the situation. “There is nothing we can really do,” Joseph Hayek, a Christian from Mount Lebanon, told The Media Line. “We don’t have a say in this war, not now, not then,” he added, referring to the low-intensity clashes that occurred for almost a year across the border until Israel decided to escalate into a total war on September 23, 2024. “Hezbollah imposed this war on all Lebanese, despite their religion,” he said.

During the first weeks of the intensified war, Lebanese citizens came together. Christians and Muslims helped each other as they have done for decades. But that has come to an end. According to Lebanon’s L’Orient-Le Jour daily, by attacking areas with a Christian majority, Israel has been trying to discourage Lebanese Christians from supporting their Shia neighbors. Israel has since heightened its attacks, following increased national Lebanese solidarity in the wake of the September attacks when pagers and wireless devices exploded across Lebanon.

Lebanese political analyst Karim Bitar told L’Orient-Le Jour that Israel’s shelling of Christian areas in Lebanon had sought to incite division among locals by provoking Christians, particularly through claims that weapons were being stockpiled in their regions.

Amid the uncertainty, in many Christian areas, especially east of Beirut and along the northern coast, normality prevails, with restaurants still open and customers coming in. However, recent Israeli military attacks on these areas, specifically on buildings housing displaced people, have led to more cautious responses among residents. Some landlords have already started declining tenants based on their origins.

“We don’t know who they are; one of them could be from Hezbollah, and that puts us all at risk,” said Walid Yazbek, owner of a building in the Christian neighborhood of Achrafieh in Beirut. He told The Media Line that he only accepted people he knew and trusted after rejecting a young man from Dahiyeh, a friend of one of his tenants.

According to Sister Maya El Beaino, a nun of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, some 9,000 Christians in three villages in southern Lebanon are in constant danger because of the war between Israel and Hezbollah, she wrote in a statement to the pontifical foundation Aid to the Church in Need (ACN).

“The situation is horrible; we are in constant danger,” Sister Maya El Beaino wrote. “There is no hospital nearby, and we only have three hours of electricity a day. We have no water or internet connection to call for help,” she added.

Some people, like Ain Ebelher, decided to stay in their villages, despite the war. Her village is about three miles from Lebanon’s border with Israel. “Everyone talks about the people who have fled, but no one talks about the many Christians who have chosen to stay because they fear losing their home and their land forever,” she said in the statement to ACN.

The emotional attachment to their land is equal among Christians and Muslims, even though the presence of Christianity in Lebanon is as old as the Christian faith itself.

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