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27 July 2006, 12:23Orthodox leader in South Lebanon afraid of Israeli occupation but will stay with his flock
Moscow, July 27, Interfax - Metropolitan Elias of Tyre and Sidon, Patriarchate of Antioch, who resides in southern Lebanon, is afraid that Israel will again occupy his country.
‘Israel tries to begin an occupation and it is not improbable at all that it will do it. I lived under occupation in the 90s. They make no difference between Christians and Muslims. If a Christian refuses to obey the occupation regime, if he resists, he is terrorized and placed in a concentration camp as any Lebanese’, the metropolitan said in an interview published in the Gazeta daily on Thursday.
‘Now they are bombing both Christian and Muslim homes’, he added relating in particular that one hundred Christians have been killed in the Christian district of Sabkha during these days and that ‘the bombing have not spared either churches or people’.
Metropolitan Elias himself is not going to flee Lebanon. ‘My flock is here. I am not afraid for my life. I worry about children, women and old people who cannot leave’, he said.
The metropolitan also refuted the allegation that Lebanese Christians are against Hezbollah. ‘There is no such problem. All the Lebanese are against the aggression and policy of Israel, not against Hezbollah. Some people may disagree on political issues. But when you see your country being destroyed, political differences are set aside’, he noted.
‘Was the bombed-out airport in Beirut only for Moslems? Only for Hezbollah? You cannot say of the Lebanese people that Christians are here and Muslims are there. We are all mixed up. And Christians are fighting the occupation together with Moslems’, Metropolitan Elias stressed. |
