At the risk of compromising the appeasement efforts aimed at facilitating the formation of a new government, Lebanese media on Thursday broadcast a leaked video in which the top Christian leader openly criticizes the Shia Hezbollah movement, accusing it of harming the country by dragging it into regional conflicts.
“Why are you standing against neutrality? Do you want to force me to go to war? Do you want to keep Lebanon in a state of war?” Maronite Patriarch Bechara Boutros Rai asks Hezbollah in the video. “Would you ask for my opinion when you do go to war? Did you ask for my approval to go to Syria, Iraq and Yemen? Would you ask for the government’s opinion when declaring war and peace with Israel? The constitution says that declaring war and peace is upon the decision of two-thirds of the government’s votes.”
“Why do you decide to drag the Lebanese into a war you have decided to wage without asking their opinion?” Rai said. “You’re not looking out for (our) interests, nor the interests of your people,” he said, apparently addressing Hezbollah, a heavily-armed movement allied to Iran.