Lebanon: Unity In Bkirki?

This editorial was published in The Daily Star on 19/04/2011

Tuesday’s meeting in Bkirki of the country’s major Christian political leaders under the patronage of recently elected Patriarch Beshara Rai represents a crucial opportunity to create a new phase in relations among Lebanon’s deeply divided Christian community.

What the gathering should not devolve into is merely another photo op, where the bickering rivals demonstrate only that they all share a similar ability to smile when having their picture taken and mouth the various lexical forms of the word “reconciliation.”

No, these men must come to Bkirki willing to express and address their differences constructively, with a shared goal of eventually finding some common ground for a unified Christian stance. Intra-Christian relations are especially brittle; the nation’s Christian community is split almost evenly, with diametrically opposed views on almost all matters of political substance.

The Christians of the March 14 coalition and those adhering to the adversarial March 8 alliance hold widely disparate views on issues ranging from the Taif Accord that ended the Civil War, the weapons of Hezbollah, relations with Syria, cooperation with the U.N. Special Tribunal for Lebanon and through to the very role that the Lebanese state should play. The leaders of the polarized camps have for years clearly aligned themselves with opposing regional powers, whose differences appear analogously irreconcilable.

Such a political gulf, however, is nothing new for the country’s Christians, nor is the role of the Maronite patriarch leading the push to bring the factions together – former Patriarch Boulos Boutros Meouchi sponsored of reconciliation in 1968. Beshara Rai, then, needs to prepare a courageous agenda that can serve as the basis for a process designed to forge common ground.

Tuesday’s meeting should function as a prelude to serious work, with follow-up meetings occurring regularly with the same four leaders – Michel Aoun Suleiman Franjieh, Samir Geagea and Amin Gemayel – committed to seeing the process through to a some sort of written compact. Of course, President Michel Sleiman, as the country’s highest-ranking Christian politician, should also be involved in the talks.

The ascension of Beshara Rai was also attended by chatter about an initiative for Christian-Muslim reconciliation, but such an undertaking – however needed and welcome that undoubtedly would be – must be preceded by at some degree of settlement of intra-Christian differences. Only when the country’s Christians can say they have a shared stance would such an interfaith enterprise be constructive. For now, there can be little hope of real national unity when the political positions of Lebanon’s Christians occupy virtually no common ground.