Al-Rahi lashes out at Hezbollah over UNIFIL, Rmeish

Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi on Sunday hit out at Hezbollah without naming it over two recent issues.

Voicing deep grief over “the assassination of the Irish soldier three days ago,” al-Rahi said that this UNIFIL peacekeeper “who came to Lebanon to protect the peace of the South has been martyred by a hatred bullet that assassinated him.”

“It’s about time, and it has long been overdue, that the state put its hand on every unruly and illegitimate weapon,” al-Rahi added, in his Sunday Mass sermon.

The Lebanese state “should implement Resolution 1701 in text and spirit, because so far its implementation has been selective, arbitrary and confined to the decision of the de facto forces,” al-Rahi went on to say, in an apparent swipe at Hezbollah and its arsenal of weapons.

Also criticizing Hezbollah without naming it, the patriarch said the residents of the southern border town of Rmeish have been decrying “violations against their land and bulldozing and construction activities by influential parties in the area.”

Describing those carrying out the activities as “de facto elements belonging to one of the parties in the area,” al-Rahi called on security agencies to “carry out their duties in protecting the properties of our sons and reassuring them.”

Security agencies must “remove violations immediately, withdraw the elements who are alien to the town and put an end to all the practices and breaches that harm coexistence,” the patriarch urged.