FEARS that the Middle East conflict will spread to Lebanon have lead to special prayers for peace in Masses today at Greenslopes St Maroun’s Lebanese Maronite Church community.
Parish priest Fr Dany Akiki said that the prayers would coincide with the feast day of the Egyptian desert father St Anthony the Great.
Fr Akiki told The Catholic Leader the local Lebanese community was uniformly against the war currently raging between Israel and the Hamas Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip.
“However, the community is split on which side it supports,” he said.
“Half say Israel is right and the other half say Hamas is right.”
He said the views reflected the complicated reality of political life in Lebanon.
“The fact that Lebanon is an Arabic nation means it is opposed to what Israel stands for.
“However, the Lebanese president (Michel Suleiman) who is a Maronite Christian has also said that war is bad for everyone and that United Nations peace agreements should be kept.”
The longer the war continued the more likely it was that Lebanon and other regions would be dragged into fighting, Fr Akiki said.
He noted that Lebanon was still recovering from the 2006 war between Hezbollah fighters and Israeli forces.
“The concern now is that Hezbollah could link up with Hamas which would then mean the war would spread to Lebanon,” he said.
On January 8 three rockets were fired from Lebanon into northern Israel although Hezbollah denied responsibility.
Meanwhile on the Sunshine Coast the Stella Maris parish have launched a petition addressed to Israeli President Shimon Perez calling for a halt to what parish priest Fr Joe Duffy described as a “sin against humanity”.
Pope Benedict, in his ‘state of the world’ address to members of the Vatican’s diplomatic corps on January 8, said a ceasefire in Gaza was indispensable to restore acceptable living conditions to the population.
Pope Benedict is planning to visit Holy Land sites in Jordan, Israel and the Israeli-occupied West Bank in May.
