TRIPOLI, Lebanon – It took Father Ibrahim Surouj around half an hour to enter his bookstore on Tuesday morning. The recent fire didn’t prevent his entry. The stream of well-wishers did. “Abouna! [Our father],” person after person shouted upon seeing Surouj as he walked down a narrow street and turned into an even narrower alleyway toward […]

By ANNE BARNARD, New York Times.
BEIRUT, Lebanon — If a wealthy patron were all the Lebanese Army needed to counter the Shiite militant group Hezbollah as the dominant force in the country, the recent $3 billion grant from Saudi Arabia might make a decisive difference in the country’s complex political landscape.

But the Saudi aid package — nearly twice Lebanon’s $1.7 billion annual defense budget — is earmarked to buy French arms and is unlikely to give the army what it needs most, say supporters and opponents of Hezbollah here. And even if it does, they say, it will take years to make an impact.

And while the Saudis are clearly alarmed at Hezbollah’s staying power and its intervention in Syria’s civil war, analysts say the gift announced last week was intended as much to send a message to the United States as to shift the military balance.

Yezid Sayigh, a scholar of Arab militaries at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, said the Saudis were declaring a “tactical divorce” from the Obama administration over their frustrations with what they see as America’s indecisiveness on Syria and its attempts at reconciliation with Iran, Saudi Arabia’s regional rival and Hezbollah’s patron.

“They’re on the warpath, angry, and that doesn’t make for good policy,” Mr. Sayigh said.

Analysts on both sides agree that if Lebanon’s government, under Saudi pressure, pushed the army to confront Hezbollah, it would risk fracturing the force along political and sectarian lines and destroying the closest thing the country has to a broad-based national institution. Mr. Sayigh said that not even the United States had tried to link aid to Lebanon’s army with action against Hezbollah.

  Pope Francis expressed readiness to visit Lebanon during a trip planned to the Holly Land, al-Joumhouria newspaper reported on Monday.   According to the daily, contacts are ongoing with the Vatican to convince the pontiff to make a brief visit to Beirut during his first trip to the Holy Land, visiting Amman, Bethlehem and […]

    A blast of brutally cold air – thanks to the polar vortex – is roaring across the central and eastern USA early this week, sending temperatures to levels not seen in 20 years.   The polar vortex is a strong area of low pressure that usually wanders around the Arctic throughout the winter. […]

  Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi reiterated on Sunday that rival officials should engage in dialogue to confront the security dangers and political crises gripping the country.   He said in his Sunday sermon during mass he held in Bkirki that he “prayed for stability in Lebanon, which on the second day of New Year fell […]

  TRIPOLI – A decades-old library owned by a Greek Orthodox priest in north Lebanon’s majority Sunni city of Tripoli was torched late Friday, a day after a sectarian scuffle, a security source said. "Unknown assailants torched the Saeh Library in Tripoli, destroying two thirds of some 80,000 books and manuscripts housed there," said the source, […]

  The United Arab Emirates on Friday reiterated its call on its citizens not to travel to Lebanon over the deteriorating security situation in the country.   A statement issued by the Foreign Ministry also asked UAE nationals currently in Lebanon to leave the country immediately and coordinate with the country’s embassy to facilitate their […]

Washington D.C., Jan 3, 2014 / 12:02 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Americans should not resign themselves to “a Middle East without Christians” but should work to expand their traditions of religious freedom overseas, says Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson. “Across North Africa and the greater Middle East, anti-Christian pressure has grown during the past few decades, sometimes subtle, sometimes overt,” Gerson wrote on Dec. 26.

He cited the Christmas Day bombings in Iraq that killed more than 30 people, the flight of Syrian Christians to Turkey, and attacks on Coptic Christians and their churches in Egypt. Gerson said the United States should see its “unique success” in dealing with religion at home as a guide for global action. He advocated a foreign policy that more strongly condemns human rights abuses, backs moderate forces and makes foreign aid conditional on the protection of minorities.

He also praised Prince Charles of Wales’ efforts to build bridges between Islam and Christianity, noting that the prince believes there is now a “crisis” where these bridges are “rapidly being deliberately destroyed by those with a vested interest in doing so.” Gerson said that other countries’ respect for religious minorities is important for both humanitarian and strategic reasons. Citing William Inboden of the University of Texas, he said there is a “robust correlation” between religious persecution and threats to national security.