Daily Star. BKIRKI: Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Butros Sfeir said on Monday that he hoped the 15-month-old deadlock in Lebanon would be resolved, "and the general mood of pessimism will soon evaporate." "We urge all local, regional and international groups to adopt a wise and calm attitude when dealing with Lebanese affairs," he told a delegation from the French Embassy headed by charge d’affaires Andre Parant. Parant, meanwhile, said France was determined to help Lebanon overcome the continuing standoff. "France will always stand by Lebanon," he said.

Sfeir said Sunday the persisting and widening divide had stripped Easter of its festive atmosphere. Sfeir made the remarks during his Easter sermon in Bkirki, the seat of the Maronite church north of Beirut. The patriarch also offered prayers for peace in Lebanon and the Middle East. Sfeir asked that "God remove this black cloud that lingers over us … and bring home the people who migrated to distant lands."

Speaking to a delegation from Caritas headed by Father Louis Samaha on Saturday, Sfeir said he hoped that Lebanon would return "to days of good, affluence and happiness." He added that he hoped the Lebanese diaspora would return to their homeland as one family of different religious affiliations living "in a nation of faith, love and peace." Sfeir said nearly one million Lebanese have left Lebanon since 1970, and Lebanon was left with only four million of its children, a number equivalent to a small street in Cairo or New York. "Yet people continue to migrate," he added, "and migration is not categorically negative, especially if the migration is to Arab countries in order to support one’s parents, but migration to Australia or Canada or the United States has slight hope of return to Lebanon."  Meanwhile, the vice president of the Higher Shiite Council Sheikh Abdel-Amir Qabalan on Sunday spoke with Patriarch Nasrallah Sfeir and Mufti Sheikh Mohammad Rashid Qabbani about the need for Lebanon to be represented at the forthcoming Arab summit in Damascus.
Daily star. BKIRKI: Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Butros Sfeir expressed pessimism over growing divisions among the Lebanese on Friday, a day after he compared Lebanon to the Palestinian territoriees. In a speech on Good Friday, Sfeir urged the Lebanese to "overcome disagreements and return to their conscience." "Rifts and divisions that have hit Lebanon do not lead to optimism," he said, adding that "persistent efforts [by some parties] to overtake the country’s main arteries are not comforting."

Qabalan raised the issue in separate telephone calls to Sfeir and Qabbani, during which he offered his greetings to them on the occasions of Easter and the Prophet Mohammad’s birthday, respectively.

Qabalan, according to the National News Agency,  stressed that "it is not in Lebanon’s interest to be hostile to Syria."

"A settlement in Lebanon cannot be reached without Syria. We should open bridges between Lebanon and Syria," Qabalan added.

Chouf Christians mark Easter

DEIR AL-QAMAR: Christians who follow the Western calendar celebrated Easter Sunday in the Chouf region of Mount Lebanon on Sunday by holding masses and prayers in several towns and villages.

In Deir al-Qamar’s Church of Saidet et Talle, Father Marcel Abi Khalil presided over a Mass in which he called for love and tolerance and preached the values of coexistence in Lebanon.

At the Saint Michael Church in the town of Maaser al-Chouf, Father Youssef Mezher presided over a mass in which he called for strengthening the sense of unity among all the Lebanese in order to protect the homeland.

Other masses were held in the villages of Harf, Damour, Naameh, Ikleem al-Kharroub and other parts of the Chouf.

The Chouf region is inhabited primarily by people of the Christian and Druze faiths. – Maher Zeineddine

Although he warned against growing divisions among the Lebanese, he said, "we can’t lose hope. It’s our country." Sfeir also lamented the deteriorating economic situation and said foreign businessmen were withdrawing their investments from the country.  On Thursday, the patriarch expressed concern over the deteriorating political and security situation in Lebanon, likening it to the worsening conditions in the Palestinian territories.  "Lebanon has become almost like Palestine," the Maronite patriarch said following talks with Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) representative in Lebanon Abbas Zaki.  "We don’t envy each other," Sfeir said in Bkirki, but stressed that the Lebanese have faith in God and each other.

"The Palestinian people have been suffering for more than half a century," he said.  Sfeir also hoped "for an end to the tragic" situation in the Palestinian territories, which he said "has had repercussions on the entire Middle East."  More than 130 Palestinians have been killed since February 27, when Israel launched a military attack on the Gaza Strip in response to rocket fire on southern Israel. Five Israelis, all but one of them soldiers, were killed during the same period.

Israel has also been battling Hamas since the group seized control of Gaza last June. In addition to its military activity, the Jewish state has imposed a tough economic blockade on the strip.

Meanwhile, Senior Shiite cleric Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah said Friday that Lebanon’s participation or absence from the Arab summit in Damascus at the end of the month was "not that big of a deal since Arab summits have never been decisive or crucial."

"We first note that the summit, like other Arab summits, cannot achieve any Arab objectives … in light of the collapsing Arab League. Secondly, to discuss the Palestinian issue [at the summit] would embarrass some states that are reluctant to condemn massacres carried out by Israel in Gaza and at the same time support the siege on Gaza and denounce operations carried out by the Palestinian resistance," Fadlallah said during his Friday sermon at the Imam Hassanayn Mosque in Haret Hreik.

Fadlallah added that the reluctance of some Lebanese groups to take part in the summit was due to "some Arab countries deciding to reduce their level of attendance at the summit, as well as explicit instructions given by the United States to boycott the summit."

"They all fail to realize that the summit is aimed at discussing Arab issues rather than Syrian ones," he added, lashing out at "some Arab regimes that stand idle as spectators while the Palestinian people are systematically uprooted."

Fadlallah said Lebanese attendance or nonattendance at the summit made little difference, as certain Arab countries had "nothing to do with Arabism or the Arab initiative and choose to follow their personal and rugged ways rather than stand in solidarity with Palestine."

"This makes the issue of Lebanese attendance ineffective either way, but perhaps it is better to boycott so as to avoid new complications in the Arab reality," he stated.

The Lebanese remain "fatally confused," the cleric said, because their internal politics were "still occupied by personal, factional and sectarian struggles."

"The Lebanese are abandoning their educated and open-minded nature and are instead adopting a bedouin mentality," he added.

"We want a free, sovereign Lebanon which practices tolerance and openness. We do not want an enslaved Lebanon which waits to receive instructions from forces which only consider the interests of their own nations," Fadlallah said.

"Perhaps the sardonic joke is that some are talking about the international community as if it were a sacred symbol, while we know that this community is subject to pressures from the US, which refuses to denounce the massacres in Lebanon, Gaza, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and Sudan," he added.