CAPERNAUM, Israel (AP) — The leader of Lebanon’s Maronite
Catholic church celebrated an outdoor Mass Wednesday for hundreds of
exiled countrymen who are considered traitors by many back home for
helping Israel maintain an 18-year occupation of south Lebanon.
Cardinal
Bechara Rai had soothing words for the former Lebanese militiamen and
their families, who fled their country in 2000, many with just the
clothes on their backs, as their Israeli allies withdrew from Lebanon.
"Innocence
paid the price and you are paying the price because of an international
and regional game," he said, standing behind the altar at sunset, with
the biblical Sea of Galilee as a dramatic backdrop.
He assured the
exiles he was trying to help, adding: "We are following up your
suffering with the respective authorities in Lebanon."
Some of the
faithful said they hope the cardinal’s unprecedented pilgrimage to
Israel — the first Lebanese religious leader to do so — is a signal they
may be able to return home someday.
"We are very grateful," said Vivian Shadid, 25. "We are full of hope that someone is
fighting for us, that someone wants us."
For others, return remains a distant possibility.
The
young already speak better Hebrew than Arabic, while some older exiles,
especially those who held senior positions in the former South Lebanon
Army militia, would face imprisonment if they returned.
Victor
Nader, a 55-year-old former senior SLA commander who now works as an
electrician, said that "until lots of things change in Lebanon, I
wouldn’t think about going back." He said the cardinal’s visit boosted
the morale of the community.
Mariam Younes, 19, was only 5 when
her family fled. She speaks accent-free Hebrew and works as a waitress.
She misses her extended family in Lebanon, she said, but is concerned
about how the community there would receive the exiles.
"We are considered traitors in Lebanon," she said.
"And then there’s the bad economic situation" in Lebanon.
Israel
invaded Lebanon repeatedly, including in 1982 in an offensive that
initially was meant to drive PLO fighters from southern Lebanon.
The
war turned into a drawn-out military occupation of parts of the south,
where Israel carved out a "security zone" meant to serve as a buffer
against cross-border attacks by the Lebanese Hezbollah militia.
During
those years, the South Lebanon Army militia fought alongside Israeli
troops against the Shiite Muslim Hezbollah, today the strongest force in
Lebanon.
About 3,500 former SLA men and their families still live
in Israel, said Shadid, 25, who studies music at Haifa University and
said she can’t return because of her father’s military past.
Other
exiles either returned to Lebanon over the years, some serving prison
sentences before resettling in their villages, or emigrated to the West.
The
Mass at Capernaum, site of a biblical fishing village, was a highlight
of Rai’s weeklong visit to the Holy Land, which began Sunday in biblical
Bethlehem and at times overlapped with a pilgrimage by Pope Francis.
In
his sermon, Rai appeared to compare the exile of the militiamen to that
of another group of Maronite Christians he met earlier in the day —
former residents of the village of Kufr Birim, who were uprooted by
Israeli troops in the war over Israel’s 1948 creation.
"This evening is for the displaced, people who lost their homes," he said.
Rai
has come under criticism at home for visiting Israel. Lebanon and
Israel remain formally at war and Lebanon bars its citizens from
visiting Israel, though Maronite clerics tending to their flock south of
the border are exempt.
The residents of Kufr Birim and their
descendants have wrangled with Israel’s governments for the past 66
years to allow them to return, using prayer, protests and court
challenges in their campaign.
The cardinal told them he would try
to harness the help of the Vatican and send a letter to the pope. "The
only way is through the Vatican, because we cannot deal with the state,"
he said, referring to Israel.
The exodus from the village took
place in November 1948, six months after Israel’s founding. At the time,
Israeli troops told more than 1,000 residents they had to leave for
security reasons, but would be allowed to return after two weeks,
residents said.
Israel didn’t keep its word and the Defense
Ministry later ignored a Supreme Court ruling allowing residents of Kufr
Birim and another Christian village to return home.
Instead, the
military destroyed Kufr Birim in 1953 as part of an attempt to create a
"security belt" without Arabs near the border with Lebanon, Israeli
journalist Danny Rubinstein said.
Many of the villagers now live in Jish, a community three miles (five kilometers) from Kufr Birim.
Only the church and a one-room village school remain intact, but villagers celebrate weddings and bury
their dead in Kufr Birim.
For
the past 10 months, activists have maintained a steady presence,
sleeping in tents pitched in the school. They have cleared weeds from
village paths and affixed photos of the original owners to house walls
still left standing.
The cardinal’s visit "can help" with the
religious side of things, activist Saher Geries said. "But politically,
what we are doing now is going to advance" the issue of return, he
added.
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Associated Press writer Areej Hazboun contributed to this report.