MARONITE priest Fr Fadi Salame says families like his in south Lebanon are faced with a choice to leave their homes for shelter in the north, leaving them vulnerable to occupation and looting, or risk being caught in the crossfire of escalating fighting between Hezbollah and Israel.
“And there’s no way back,” he said.
Right now, the roads were only open one way – north.
“No one knows how long the fighting will last.”
He said he was in contact with his own family, who lived only minutes from the southern border with Israel, ensuring they had a plan to move his 95-year-old mum if evacuation alerts were issued for their village.
“I am in contact every day,” he said.
“They will need to move somewhere else; they are not safe in south Lebanon at all now.”
He said the situation reminded him of the war in 2006.
The conflict in 2006 lasted a little over a month – it began with a raid by Hezbollah into Israel, broke out into strikes that killed 1100 Lebanese civilians and combatants, and 165 Israeli civilians and combatants, before ending in a United Nations peace deal.
Fr Salame was a priest in a village in the south at the time.
His family evacuated north for almost a month.
He said it was difficult to part from them, but he accepted he had a duty to stay with his parishioners who could not evacuate.
“It was a good thing to stay to support the elderly and those who couldn’t afford to leave to somewhere else,” he said.
But he said this conflict seemed “more aggressive” than 2006.
In the current conflict, Hezbollah and Israel have been trading attacks across the southern Lebanese border since October 8, 2023.
Initially, Hezbollah launched rocket strikes on Israel to deter it from its war in Gaza, and the two skirmished with airstrikes ever since.
But the conflict escalated when hundreds of pagers and walkie-talkies were detonated simultaneously on consecutive days, September 17 and 18.
The devices allegedly belonged to Hezbollah members, but the explosions also killed and wounded many Lebanese civilians.
Fr Salame said those attacks were “shocking”.
“That was a shocking attack for everyone to hear about, how many devices exploded at the same time,” he said.
“No one expected this – I don’t know if it was Israel or someone else trying to kill a thousand people.
“We have had many explosions in the past… but we have never seen things like that.”
On Sunday, the Maronite community in Brisbane offered Mass at the Gold Coast for peace in Lebanon.
Fr Salame said many community members were coming to him “very worried” about the safety of their families in south Lebanon.
“We are all talking about what’s going to happen and how we’re going to help move our families to somewhere else,” he said.
Fr Salame urged Catholics to pray for peace.
He said it was not Lebanon’s war.
He said Lebanon was just the land for a war between larger geopolitical powers and that made it all the more tragic.
