Al-Rahi Says Border Talks Put Lebanon on 'Track of Peaceful Negotiations'

Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi on Sunday welcomed the announcement of a framework agreement for the demarcation of disputed land and sea borders with Israel.

“We received the announcement with hope,” said al-Rahi in his Sunday Mass sermon.

“It allows Lebanon to reclaim its southern international border and facilitates for it the extraction of its oil and gas maritime resources,” the patriarch added.

He said the development would also “end the series of aggression and wars between Lebanon and Israel according to U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701” and put the country “on the track of peaceful negotiations instead of fighting -- without being a normalization process.”

Al-Rahi also said that the move should be an occasion to “find an agreement resolving the issue of the presence of around half a million Palestinian refugees on Lebanon’s soil.”

He also called for “seeking a demarcation of the border with Syria from the side of the Shebaa Farms to end the abnormal and ambiguous situation there.”