Al-Rahi Urges Officials to Resolve Problems that Lead to Land Sales

Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi urged Lebanese officials on Sunday to help the people preserve their land by resolving the problems that lead to property sales and emigration.

In his sermon, al-Rahi said the Lebanese constitution’s preamble states that “Lebanese territory is one for all Lebanese.”

“Every Lebanese shall have the right to live in any part thereof and to enjoy the rule of law wherever he resides,” it says. “There shall be no segregation of the people on the basis of any type of belonging, and no fragmentation, partition, or settlement of non-Lebanese in Lebanon.”

Al-Rahi also reminded that article 15 of the constitution states that the “rights of ownership shall be protected by law. No one's property may be expropriated except for reasons of public utility, in the cases established by law and after fair compensation has been paid beforehand.”

“This means that the state should come up with laws that put obstacles and constraints to the rights of ownership,” al-Rahi said in his sermon.

He said the state should play a historic role in helping the Lebanese not to lose their properties. “Or else Lebanon would become like a hotel.”

“Then what would remain from the pluralist system that Lebanon has been characterized with?” the patriarch wondered.

Describing the land as a heritage from the ancestors, al-Rahi said: “It is the duty of the state to end the reasons that lead to (land and property) sales and emigration such as war, economic crisis, poverty, bad infrastructure, corruption in state institutions, security tension and lack of legislation that brings equality and justice before the law.”

He added that authorities have a duty to “provide job opportunities so that citizens could invest in their lands and not sell them … particularly to foreigners.”