An unprecedented visit by Leba**n's Maronite Patriarch to the Holy Land has angered the powerful Shia Muslim movement Hezbollah, a sworn enemy of Israel, technically still at war with Leba**n. Patriarch Beshara Rai's planned visit is highly sensitive in a country where power is shared between Christians and Muslims, and where political divisions carved out during the 1975-1990 civil war have never quite healed. Though an erstwhile Christian political domination has faded, tiny Leba**n is the only country in the Arab world with a Christian president under a complex, informal power-sharing arrangement. Rai's visit is the first by a Lebanese religious official to the Holy Land since the state of Israel was established in 1948 and is intended to fit in with Pope Francis's three-day pilgrimage to Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian territories that begins Saturday.
05-24-2014, 04:35 PM
Maronite patriarch's Israel trip raises Hezbollah ire
An unprecedented visit by Leba**n's Maronite Patriarch to the Holy Land has angered the powerful Shia Muslim movement Hezbollah, a sworn enemy of Israel, technically still at war with Leba**n. Patriarch Beshara Rai's planned visit is highly sensitive in a country where power is shared between Christians and Muslims, and where political divisions carved out during the 1975-1990 civil war have never quite healed. Though an erstwhile Christian political domination has faded, tiny Leba**n is the only country in the Arab world with a Christian president under a complex, informal power-sharing arrangement. Rai's visit is the first by a Lebanese religious official to the Holy Land since the state of Israel was established in 1948 and is intended to fit in with Pope Francis's three-day pilgrimage to Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian territories that begins Saturday.
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