Editor’s note: this is the second article of a two-part series offering direct testimony from members of the Pontifical Mission in Israel and Lebanon regarding the impact of escalating hostilities on Christians in the war-torn areas. The first part can be found here.
CV NEWS FEED // The Pontifical Mission regional director for Lebanon, Syria and Egypt, has testified to the desperate plight of Christians in Lebanon, who sometimes have only 20 minutes warning before their villages and homes are destroyed as the war between Israel and Palestine wages on.
The Pontifical Mission for Palestine, founded by Pope Pius XII in 1949, operates under the Catholic Near East Welfare Association (CNEWA), which was founded by Pope Pius XI in 1926 to help those in need scattered throughout the historic but unstable lands of the ancient Eastern churches — the Middle East, Northeast Africa, India and Eastern Europe.
In a November 4 CNEWA-Pontifical Mission webinar presentation, Michel Constantin, regional director for Lebanon, Syria, and parts of Egypt and Iraq since 2014, testified to the escalating destruction of homes and lives that Palestinian Christians are suffering due to Israeli aggression. Constantin lives in Beirut and joined the Pontifical Mission in 1989, serving 25 years as projects manager and coordinator before becoming regional director. His testimony follows below.
Testimony of Michel Constantin, regional director for Lebanon, Syria, and parts of Egypt and Iraq
We are on the opposite side of their suffering. But the difference is they have an iron dome that can protect the people. Well, in Lebanon, we don’t have any iron dome, and the level of violence and brutality and Israeli raids is, of course, not to be compared with the capacity of Hezbollah. So you can imagine the level of destruction.
In South Lebanon, we estimate that already 25% of buildings, residential buildings, schools, churches, or mosques, have been wiped out, have been destroyed completely, and they are almost at the ground level. Almost 90% of the people of the South have left. They have left, and they are displaced in Mount Lebanon and in Beirut and in North Lebanon.
Not only the South, but also the Bekaa (valley.) We have seen in Deir el Ahmar, which is a Christian hub, which remains safe. We have seen a wave of displacement that is far beyond the capacity of the people to receive. In Deir el Ahmar, we used to have a 7,000 to 9,000 Christian population. They have received so far 20,000 people in their houses, in their five schools. So people are on the street.
People are without any capacity to sustain their family themselves. Especially that the way the people are leaving is also new and unprecedented. The Israeli port parole of the Israeli army would warn the people of one quarter of one village to leave immediately.
Sometimes he gave them only 20 minutes. After 20 minutes, they were still on the road, leaving, and they saw their houses and the whole village destroyed completely. So they don’t have time to pick up anything, to take anything with them. We have seen people in pajamas on the street. They left at midnight. They were warned and they had to leave immediately.
I have seen elderly people who need oxygen. They were left behind and they were killed in their homes because they couldn’t take them in 20 minutes. The southern suburb of Beirut, which is also a Shiite populated area, more than 30-40% of this quarter have been destroyed completely.
Thank God [for] the internal solidarity, because the hosting communities are non-Shiite. All Shiite areas in Lebanon are under attack and under heavy destroying. So the other religious groups, Christians, Sunnis, Druze, have welcomed people in their homes, in their houses.
But also this has a very limited capacity because Lebanon, as you know, is passing through a very, very difficult economic situation. And all the people of Lebanon, they have lost their savings in the banks. So all money they have in the banks have been blocked for five years now. So people have a very limited capacity.
In Deir el Ahmar, I have seen people using the provision they make in summer for the winter. They have used this provision to feed their guests. They call them our guests, not the displaced people, to feed them. And everything was gone in one week because one family is hosting now 20 persons, like two, three families in their homes. But also this is creating a very difficult situation on those Christian families and families from other groups.
The situation is really hard and difficult. And Israel is trying even more to create an internal conflict. How is that happening? It’s happening because they are also chasing the Shiite families and the Shiite displaced families into their new shelters and bombing them inside the Christian villages and Sunni villages and Druze villages, which is making the genuine inhabitants of those villages be afraid and ask for the displaced to leave and to find another place.
And they don’t have another place. We are very much afraid in Lebanon that this could create internal tension that could lead eventually maybe to a mini civil war or a kind of internal violence between Lebanese. So this is continuing and increasing.
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Day after day we see bombing of Christian and Sunni and Druze villages where the displaced have found shelter and refuge. This is about the general situation. Now we as CNEWA Pontifical Mission, have been able to launch an appeal at the beginning of the war by mid-September, by 17th of September.
And we have been blessed by your generosity of CNEWA and other European members. And we have been able to send the Christian villages on the border where we still have 3,000 families that are still living on the border. We have been able to send them provision, food, wheat and fuel for water wells.
So this has been done. At the same time, we are working with our church partners in the country, congregations, bishops and parish priests to help those who found refuge in church institutions as well. And the last category that we are helping is: we have around 5,000 families, Christian families, who left the south and came to Beirut and Mount Lebanon.
And there we are trying also to reach out for them. Many of them are not in shelters, but rather in homes and houses with neighbors or with people they know, or maybe they were received by other families. So it’s difficult to reach them, but we are capable to organize this in coordination with other church institutions and organizations like Caritas and others who are working on the ground to reach out for them, especially before Christmas.
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This is the general situation. The future is very unknown because all attempts for ceasefire [have] failed till now. And the level of destruction is increasing day after day.
Almost all villages by three kilometers on the border have been destroyed completely and wiped out. And still the warring are advancing little by little to other villages to the second level, to the second line of villages in the south. The same in the Bekaa, nobody is capable to work normally because they have heavy shelling every day on all northern Bekaa.
The rest of the country [is] relatively still in [a] safe situation. But of course, the tension and the economical tension and the displacement tension is very heavy on everybody.
