Mgr Sayah: "They should be allowed to return home". Former General Lahad: "We pin our hopes on support from anti-Syrian Lebanese."
Haifa (AsiaNews) The issue of Lebanese people who sought refuge in Israel after the withdrawal of Israeli forces from southern Lebanon in May 2000, is a problem which calls for attention and "which must be addressed objectively". This is what Mgr Paul Sayah, Maronite Archbishop of Haifa and the Holy Land and Patriarchal Vicar for Jordan, told AsiaNews. Israel controlled southern Lebanon from 1985 to 2000 with the backing of the South Lebanon Army led by General Antoine Lahad, a dissident Maronite Christian accused by Syria supporters of being a Filo-Zionist. After the Israeli withdrawal five years ago, more than 7,000 Lebanese fled to Israel for fear of reprisals from Beirut backed by Damascus. Lahad now runs a restaurant in Tel Aviv. Together with other co-citizens exiled in Israel, he hopes to be able to return soon to his homeland thanks to the Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon. Lahad and many of his supporters from what was once the South Lebanon Army are considered as traitors and as Israeli spies, especially by Hezbollah and by Syria. "Stirred by fear, many Lebanese families sought refuge in May 2000 because they were forced to escape from Lebanon: why should we consider them all as spies?" asked Mgr Sayah, highlighting that the humanitarian aspect of the problem should be considered.
Around 2,500 Lebanese are still in Israel; the others returned home, many defying the risk or certainty of arrest. "Even those who stayed back in Israel want to return home and now they taste the bitterness of exile every day," continued the archbishop. Mgr Sayah called on the Lebanese authorities to take the problem into consideration, asking them to extend to others the amnesty which some Lebanese who returned home benefited from.
In a recent interview with Jerusalem Post, the former General Lahad said he was pinning his hopes in the rise to power of Michel Aoun, the anti-Syrian general only recently returned to Beirut after exile in France. (JH)