COMMENT: The greatest hope of the Rmeish people is to live in peace. Israel and Hezbollah have other priorities.

Sometimes little things vividly illustrate and reveal larger truths. Rmeish is a small town in Southern Lebanon near the Israeli border. It is a predominantly Christian town, with approximately 99% of the population being Maronite Catholics, and one of a handful of Christian villages in a Shiite Muslim-majority region in southern Lebanon.

The greatest hope of the Rmeish people is to live in peace. But being so close to the border means it is a close observer and reluctant spectator of wars, including the one launched by the Lebanese terrorist organization Hezbollah against Israel on October 8, 2023. Rmeish barely managed to stay out of the conflict as Hezbollah used much of the border area to attack Israel, prompting intense Israeli return fire.

In March 2024, locals discovered that Hezbollah militants were attempting to install a rocket launcher in the town; This was a step that would lead to a harsh reaction from Israel. According to Beirut news L’Orient Le Jour“The situation reached such a point that Hezbollah members started firing bullets into the air while citizens were ringing the bell of the church in the village.” Locals managed to defend their town that day and received expressions of solidarity from Lebanese Christian leaders in Beirut. It is not uncommon for Hezbollah to intimidate Christians in the South to the point of outright murder, and it has been happening for decades.

However, the war continued and in early October 2024, the Israeli Army entered Lebanon’s border region to push back Hezbollah forces. Israel’s operation was extremely destructive, targeting a dense network of infrastructure, weapons and tunnels located in and under Shiite Muslim villages and used by Hezbollah to launch more than 9,000 rockets against Israel.

Rmeish stood apart. It managed to prevent itself from becoming a battlefield or missile launch pad and was not destroyed. This fact alone made the town the target of Hezbollah’s propaganda offensive on social media, accusing its residents of being traitors for not joining Hezbollah’s war.

@WarMonitors, a pro-Hezbollah major Hezbollah relies on front organizations and local proxies to apply pressure and intimidation. Lebanese law is very strict on such matters, and there is a pattern of the Lebanese government investigating individuals for even the slightest suspicion of any contact with Israelis.

While some of the local population fled to Beirut, many residents remained in their ancestral village. Indeed, they welcomed hundreds of displaced Lebanese from other villages in the area, both Shiite Muslims and Christians, as “guests of Rmeish” and settled them in a local monastery. Others took shelter in the homes of the Rmeish people. Many came from Ain Ebel, a village that the Israelis had ordered evacuated.

As the war rages around him, food is increasingly scarce. Towards the end of October, there was no flour left to make bread. Communication with the outside world is intermittent. A humanitarian aid convoy managed to evacuate the villagers of Ain Abel, but the roads are dangerous and the sounds of clashes and bombings between Hezbollah and Israel can often be heard in the town. Residents who desire the permanent deployment of the Lebanese Army and Police and the departure of both Hezbollah and the Israelis.

The situation of Christians caught between two fires is tragically common in the Middle East. In 2002, Palestinian gunmen escaping from the Israelis hid for 39 days in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, the holy site marking the location of the manger where the Lord Jesus was born.

Rural Christians in Egypt must be wary of threats from both Muslim extremists and the security forces fighting them. The decades-long war between the Turkish Army and PKK Kurdish rebels was the direct cause of the decline in the population of Assyrian Christian villagers in Tur Abdin, the ancient and until 50 years ago majority “Mountain of God Worshipers”. Christian refuge in Southern Anatolia. In northern Iraq, Christian villages faced depredations by Sunni Muslim jihadists a decade ago, followed by ongoing intimidation by Shiite Muslim militias today, helping to drive out the Jihadists.

As the war in Lebanon rages on and innocents are killed both north and south of the Lebanon-Israel border, we must remember and pray for our brothers and sisters, the Christians of Rmeish, who have shown great fortitude and hospitality in the face of this disaster. The danger they face is not only the destruction of the dangerously approaching war, but also the threat of being scapegoated or demonized by others for rejecting a war they did not choose.