Maronite Patriarch Bechara al-Rahi has renewed warnings about the growing sale of land in Lebanon, reviving concerns among segments of the country’s Christian community that property transactions could affect the demographic makeup of certain areas amid war, displacement and mounting economic hardship.

The debate has intensified over reported property purchases in Mount Lebanon, particularly in areas with predominantly Christian populations. However, no publicly available evidence has established that the transactions are part of a coordinated plan to engineer demographic change.

Bkerke Raises Alarm Over Land Sales

During Sunday Mass in Aqoura, in the Byblos district, al-Rahi urged Lebanese people not to rush into selling or relinquishing their land, describing it as “memory, roots, identity and the future.”

He warned that land lost today might never be recovered by future generations, underscoring its significance beyond its financial value.

The Lebanese Land Movement has pointed to indications of purchases involving apartments, plots of land and buildings in Baabdat, the Metn highlands and Keserwan, all areas with predominantly Christian populations. The reported transactions have raised questions about their scale and the sources of financing.

Such reports, however, do not in themselves establish that the purchases are driven by a unified political agenda.

Fears Over Coexistence and Social Tensions

A Lebanese ecclesiastical source said al-Rahi’s warning reflected growing concerns among segments of the population about the potential demographic changes and social tensions that could follow property sales.

“These concerns have become increasingly prominent recently, amid growing calls to raise the issue and discuss it openly. This explains the timing of the patriarch’s position,” the source told Asharq Al-Awsat.

The source described fears of demographic change as legitimate, particularly when land transactions take place under the exceptional circumstances currently facing Lebanon.

Such activity, the source warned, could heighten tensions in a country already deeply divided politically and damage relations among its various communities.

The concern, the source added, extends beyond the principle of buying and selling property to the timing of transactions and the circumstances in which they occur.

Raising the issue amid Lebanon’s current crisis reflects fears that the country’s economic and social hardships could be exploited, the source said.

The source stressed that the central concern was preserving the formula of coexistence on which Lebanon is built and preventing property sales from becoming a source of friction among Lebanese communities.

Such issues had not generated the same degree of anxiety when relations among the country’s communities were more stable, the source said. But deepening political divisions and successive crises have brought them back to the forefront.

The priority, the source added, should be to protect coexistence and ensure that the current circumstances are not exploited in ways that deepen divisions or fuel tensions.