Shafaq News
The most effective rebuttal to the Lebanese politicians arguing that Israel's war represents a historic opportunity for Christians has not come from their opponents, but from the war itself —a campaign that has struck Christian, Sunni and Shiite villages in southern Lebanon with the same artillery, issued evacuation orders to Christian and Shiite communities in the same breath, and destroyed Christian churches and Shiite shrines with the same indifference to the distinction its Lebanese proponents were drawing.
The argument that a foreign military campaign can be read as a sectarian opportunity requires, at a minimum, that the military in question share the reading. Eighteen months of documented strikes on southern Lebanon make clear it does not —and the evidence arrived, with particular precision, in the village of Debel.
In Debel, a Christian community a few kilometers from the Israeli border, a statue of Jesus Christ had stood at the village entrance for decades, the kind of marker that tells a traveler what kind of place they are entering, and what its people hold sacred. In April 2026, images circulated online showing an Israeli soldier smashing it with a sledgehammer. A few weeks later, another image appeared from the same village: a different soldier, cigarette in mouth, pressing a second cigarette between the lips of a statue of the Virgin Mary. The Israeli army's spokesperson said the military "views the incident with utmost severity" and that the soldier's conduct "completely deviates from the values expected of its personnel" —the same statement, word for word, that Israel had issued less than three weeks earlier in response to the first desecration.
No Exemption
The Amnesty International satellite analysis of Israeli strikes between September 2024 and January 2025 found near-total destruction across the southern border zone. Southern villages with a majority Christian population —including Rmaysh and Aalma ash-Shaab— were largely spared during the initial phase of the 2023–2024 conflict. That changed after October 2024, when Israeli airstrikes and expanding evacuation orders reached areas not aligned with Hezbollah, resulting in extensive destruction of predominantly Christian villages as well. Signs mounted that Israel sought to establish a new demographic reality in southern Lebanon through deliberate displacement and destruction, one that no longer exempted communities outside Hezbollah's orbit.
The destruction of religious heritage has been systematic across both communities. Melkite churches in Yaroun and Derdghaya, both listed as Lebanese cultural heritage sites, were destroyed in 2024. A convent and former school belonging to the Salvatorian Sisters in Yaroun were demolished in May 2026. The St. George Melkite Catholic Church in Dardghaya was destroyed in a December 2024 airstrike. The Maqam Shamoun Al-Safa shrine in Chamaa —venerated by both Christians and Muslims and associated with Saint Peter— was heavily damaged by Israeli shelling. The mayor of Debel stated that Israeli soldiers broke many statues of saints found inside homes across the village.
The town of Qulay'a, predominantly Christian, was targeted, and its parish priest, Pierre al-Rai —who had publicly pledged to remain on the land— was killed. Residents of Rmeish rang church bells in defiance as evacuation orders arrived. According to the Religious Freedom Data Centre, 181 incidents of harassment targeting Christians, Christian symbols, and institutions were recorded in Israel in 2025 alone.
Easter in the Crossfire
The scale of what was happening forced the Vatican into an unusual operational role. Archbishop Paolo Borgia, the Apostolic Nuncio to Lebanon, made multiple trips to the southern border zone carrying humanitarian aid. On March 16, 2026, Borgia traveled from Beirut to the Blue Line itself, visiting Rmeish, Debel, and Ain Ebel, his second trip to the south in just a few days, covering Christian, Muslim, and mixed villages under Israeli bombardment. An Easter Sunday convoy was forced to suspend its mission three kilometers from Debel after becoming trapped in heavy crossfire, with those on board waiting under gunfire and explosions before concluding they could not proceed.
On May 6, Borgia met Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican and then connected him in a video call with thirteen Catholic priests still serving in southern villages. Father Toni Elias, Maronite parish priest in Rmeich, described the encounter as "first a surprise, then a great joy." A few days before the call, the Israeli military had demolished the last standing building in Yaroun —the convent— and Italian UNIFIL soldiers donated a replacement crucifix to Debel after the original was destroyed. A Vatican convoy, on Easter, could not reach a Christian village in southern Lebanon. The politicians arguing that the war represents a Christian opportunity had no comment on the convoy.
The Numbers Don't Lie
The data on Lebanese Christian attitudes toward normalization with Israel reveals precisely how detached the political entrepreneurs promoting that argument have become from their own community's position. Arab Barometer polling from 2021–2022 found that 38% of Lebanese Christians favored normalization —significantly higher than the 5% of Lebanese Muslims who did— reflecting a long-standing difference in how Lebanon's communities relate to the regional order Hezbollah represents. That was the high-water mark. It preceded Gaza, the Lebanon war, the destroyed churches, and the smashed statues.
In post-October 7 surveys conducted in 2023–2024, support for normalization across all communities collapsed, with no surveyed country showing more than 13% in favor. The 2025 Arab Opinion Index found that 89% of Lebanese respondents opposed their country recognizing Israel. The community whose support for normalization was highest before the war has watched Israeli soldiers desecrate its churches, destroy its convent schools, and evacuate its border villages. The argument for normalization is being made, with increasing volume, by politicians whose own constituents have largely abandoned the position.
Washington Institute polling captures the remaining differentiation in 2024: while 93% of Shiites expressed a positive view of Hezbollah, only 29% of Christians did —but 59% of Christians expressed a positive opinion of Hamas, demonstrating that opposition to Hezbollah's political project does not translate into sympathy for Israel's military campaign. Lebanese Christians have legitimate grievances about Hezbollah's unilateral decision to drag Lebanon into war —grievances shared by many Sunnis. Those grievances are not the same thing as a desire for peace with the state whose army smashed their saints.
Read more: Ceasefire without sovereignty: Lebanon's fragmented power blocks peace with Israel
The South They Share
Southern Lebanon's demographic reality cannot be reduced to a Shiite region with Christian enclaves. Statistics Lebanon estimates the country is approximately 32.2% Shiite, 31.2% Sunni, and 30.5% Christian overall, and in the south specifically, Christian villages, predominantly Maronite and Melkite, are interspersed throughout the Jezzine, Marjeyoun, Nabatieh, and Bint Jbeil, Tyre, al-Zahrani, and Saida districts alongside Shiite-majority communities, some directly on the border. Rmeish, Debel, Ain Ebel, Marjeyoun, Yaroun, and Derdghaya have coexisted with Shiite-majority neighbors for centuries.
That coexistence has been functional rather than merely tolerant. Hezbollah's social institutions operate over 80 clinics across the South and Beqaa. According to the group’s data, nearly 10% of beneficiaries are non-Shiite. In mixed municipalities, joint projects for roads, street lighting, and irrigation have been collaboratively implemented by Christian institutions and Hezbollah-affiliated networks, creating a pattern of functional coexistence that both communities viewed as a guarantee of local stability. The tobacco farming and olive groves that define the rural south are tended by people from both communities. The water sources and irrigation networks they share do not follow sectarian lines.
The solidarity that emerged during the displacement crisis confirmed what the political rhetoric denied. Deir el-Ahmar, a predominantly Maronite village in the Beqaa, opened at least six shelters for displaced persons from neighboring Shiite and Sunni communities, receiving thousands from Baalbek. Nicole Kamatou, active in relief efforts for displaced southerners, told Shafaq News that the segment of the Christian street promoting sectarian division was the same segment that benefited from the civil war's logic, and that most Christians remember the isolation and cost of that period too well to accept its revival. Volunteer Nabil Yacoub, overseeing a Beirut relief center, told Shafaq News: "I am from a different sect, but serving displaced people from another sect is a human duty rooted in my patriotism. We are all children of this country."
In Yaroun, the last building still standing after Israel's 2024 campaign was the Salvatorian convent. Israeli forces demolished it in May 2026. The village had been emptied of its Christian residents long before. The politicians who described the war as a Christian opportunity were not in Yaroun when the convent fell. The people who had lived beside it —Christian and Shiite, farmers and nuns and volunteers— were already gone.
Written and edited by Shafaq News staff.