Hundreds of Thousands Lebanese Civilians Return Home as Ceasefire Holds

One week after the U.N.-imposed Israel-Hezbollah cease-fire, some 400,000 displaced Lebanese returned to the southern suburbs of Beirut and other areas amid calls for Christian-Muslim dialogue.

|PIC1|Hours after the official cease-fire on Monday, thousands of civilians piled furniture and possessions salvaged into cars and rushed home. Despite warnings from the government of Lebanon and international aid organisations on the dangers of returning to southern towns, displaced people throughout Lebanon and 107,000 refugees from Syria have streamed back home, according to a U.N. Security Council report obtained by CNN.

“The almost 800 public institutions, schools and buildings temporarily occupied by up to 150,000 displaced are now virtually empty, thereby significantly easing the stress on host communities,” said Kofi Annan, United Nations Secretary-General, in the report to the Council Friday.

In the wake of the war still fresh in the minds of all, a Christian ministry in Beirut is helping to generate Christian-Muslim dialogue. The Contact and Resource Center (CRC) of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is bringing together Christians, Muslims and others to fulfill its mission of providing a higher quality of life and security for people living with disabilities in Lebanon.

CRC, which was founded by a Lutheran missionary in 1978, has sponsored reconciliation dialogues which gather Christian, Muslims and people with disabilities to share personal as well as their hopes for Lebanon.

"We have lived together, and we want to live together. Please realise that, in Lebanon, there is an opportunity for (all) to live together, for walking the road together, for not judging the other,” said Agnes Dagher-Wakim, director of the CRC, in an ELCA report released Friday. “I think the world is taking sides, and I don't think a Christian should take sides.” The CRC director believes that despite the current situation, there remains the opportunity for people in Lebanon and the world to “all live on one side.”

|TOP|Dagher-Wakim spoke from Beirut to the ELCA News Service on Aug. 15 and reported that many Muslims who fled the south are received into Christian homes.

"That is why I'm saying that it is time to walk together,” urged the director, as she recognised the effort will require a lot of patience and hard work.

A World Council of Churches delegation to the Middle East has also called for increase dialogue between Christians, Jews and Muslims. During a press conference on Wednesday in Geneva, delegation leader the Rev. Jean-Arnold de Clermont, president of the Conference of European Churches and head of the Protestant Federation of France, said: “We need to speak truthfully with each other now. We need to talk about the future meaning of justice in this situation,” according to Ecumenical News International.

The delegation to Beirut, Jerusalem and Ramallah included Roman Catholic Archbishop Bernard-Nicolas Aubertin of Tours in France and WCC staff member Marilia Alves-Schuller.|AD|

ELCA’s Dagher-Wakim pointed out 70 percent of the people who suffer in southern Lebanon are Muslims.

"This is not a civil war. Christians and Muslims are not fighting. It is not their fight,” said the CRC director. “You can't imagine the horror of parents carrying their dead children. The world doesn't see this. The world only sees people with beards, and people who are beating their breast with fists and shouting."

"People come in all shapes and sizes and in all religions," she continued. "But sometimes people judge from afar by (the) actions of a few. It is not a time to judge whether a Muslim is a terrorist or not.”

Since the conflict Israel-Hezbollah conflict began on July 12, ELCA International Disaster Response has sent $45,000 to the CRC. It also sent $50,000 on July 17 to support relief work in Lebanon through Action by Churches Together (ACT) and the Middle East Council of Churches (MECC).

MECC is a member of ACT – a global alliance of churches and related agencies working to save lives and support communities in emergency situations worldwide. ACT is based in Geneva with the World Council of Churches (WCC) and the Lutheran World Federation (LWF). The ELCA is a member of ACT, the LWF and WCC.






Michelle Vu
Christian Today Correspondent