BEIRUT — Cardinal Beshara al-Rai, the head of the Maronite Church, has insisted on going ahead with his pastoral visit to occupied Palestine. Rai says he wants to meet with his parishioners face to face, although he has used teleconferencing before, to address Maronite youths in Nazareth, on February 15, 2013.

On the eve of the anniversary of liberation and the defeat of the Israeli army in South Lebanon on May 25, Rai will travel from Lebanon to Jordan, on his way to the occupied territories. 

The patriarch will then cross into occupied Palestine with the clerical delegation tasked with receiving Pope Francis, via the Allenby Bridge, and will have to pass through an Israeli army checkpoint.

Usually, Palestinians and others travelling to the West Bank are given a hard time by the Israeli soldiers manning this checkpoint in particular, because of the often-arbitrary measures enforced by the occupation forces there. But since the patriarch holds a Vatican passport, he will have no such problems.

In the West Bank, Patriarch Rai will meet with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who, along with the Palestinian people, is waiting for Rai “with the warmest longing,” according to Abbas’ letter to Bkirki, carried by Palestinian Ambassador to Lebanon Ashraf Dabbour. 

After meeting with Abbas, the patriarch will head to East Jerusalem and the Church of the Resurrection, “where the Occupation will be in charge of the patriarch’s security,” as one bishop told Lebanese daily Al-Akhbar. The bishop justified this by saying that the church had not asked Israel to protect Rai, and that the occupation authorities are assumed to be in charge of everything there.

Rai will thus pray in church under the eyes of the occupation forces. He will then proclaim, within range of Israeli ears, “We have been in the Holy Land before Israel existed,” and, “Jerusalem is our city and my parish is there,” as he said from Beirut airport upon returning from France last week.

The pastoral character of Rai’s visit will encompass Christians not only in Jerusalem but also in the territories occupied in 1948, including Haifa and Acre, where the patriarch is set to meet “members of the Lebanese community.” Rai also plans to hold mass in the villages of Iqrit and Kafr Bir’im.

In a press conference on Wednesday, the Archdiocese of Haifa stressed that the visit is not “political,” saying that the “members of the Maronite Church are preparing to receive the head of the church who will visit the country with the rest of the Eastern Patriarchs to receive the Pope.” 

The Archdiocese said that Rai would visit the dispossessed Maronite villages of Kafr Bir’im and Mansoura – but stopped short of saying who exactly had dispossessed their people.

The statement also said that Rai will hold a mass with a number of priests and residents of Kafr Bir’im in the church at the abandoned village. 

During his visit, the statement continued, Rai plans to meet with Lebanese affiliated to the South Lebanon Army – the militia that collaborated with Israel during its occupation of south Lebanon and fled (voluntarily) to Israel in 2000. 

Rai also plans to hold mass in Haifa, visit parishioners in the village of Jesh in the Upper Galilee, and participate in a religious dialogue session in the village of Isfiya. “A Druze and not a Jewish brigade of the Israeli army” will accompany Rai on his pastoral tour, as the Church has been at pains to stress.

In Lebanon, both Lebanese and Palestinians are divided about Rai’s visit. PLO officials have welcomed the visit by the patriarch, while officials in other Palestinian factions have deemed the visit an act of normalization with the enemy. 

One Hamas official criticized Rai’s visit, saying that those who enter the West Bank are bound to visit the territory occupied in 1948 – i.e. Israel proper – and that there was a fatwa prohibiting visits to Jerusalem under occupation. 

A Fatah official rejected this view, however, saying that the visit helps Jerusalemites stay in their land, and confront the economic blockade they live under as a result of the efforts to Judaize East Jerusalem.

Sources close to Hezbollah told Al-Akhbar that Patriarch Bechara al-Rai’s visit to occupied Palestine “will help legitimize the Zionist entity,” something that will be exploited by the Israelis to claim their state is religiously tolerant, and that the Lebanese Maronite cardinal visited Israel without harassment, as the sources said. 

The sources believe that emphasizing the pastoral character of the visit ultimately equates Israel with two Arab countries, Syria and Jordan, which have been included in visits Rai said were “pastoral” as well.

In the meantime, during a meeting with Mufti Mohammed Rashid Qabbani on Tuesday, Rai said the planned visit was still going ahead. Sources said the mufti told the patriarch that there was no unified Islamic position in relation to such visits. 

According to the same sources, the mufti did not express an opinion on the issue, but told people close to him that Rai was in a position of responsibility and that he would have to deal with the consequences of the visit later.  

-By Qassem Qassem -AlAkhba