In an address from the balcony of his limestone residence in the town of Bkerke, Lebanon, at the end of February, Lebanon’s senior Catholic prelate, Cardinal Bechara al-Rai, made it clear he believes his country is on the brink of collapse—and the key to rescuing it involves disarming Hezbollah. “There does not exist two or several states within one land,” Rai said before a crowd of hundreds of people, who had gathered despite the pandemic. “There does not exist two or more armies within one united state.”
It was the latest of a series of sermons and speeches in recent months that continue to grip the Lebanese media and made the 81-year-old Rai—patriarch of Lebanon’s Maronite church, the Levant’s most influential Christian community—the unlikely head of a new political movement that leans on the support of establishment figures while taking up the language of anti-government protesters. It’s fair to wonder where this balancing act is leading.
