The following are summaries of today's major stories published in the Arabic press. LBCI does not edit press digest articles for content, giving English-language readers insight into the various views expressed in newspapers across the Arab world.
The Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch and All the East John X Yazigi said some parties are attempting to drag Lebanon into strife so that instability and insecurity could prevail over the country.
“We could find a solution to our internal affairs through dialogue and understanding,” Patriarch Yazigi said in an interview with As-Safir newspaper on Friday.
On the sidelines of his meeting with Syriac Catholic Patriarch Ignatius Joseph III Younan in Balamand, Yazigi also regretted the presidential vacuum and stressed that the election of a new head of state safeguards Lebanon’s security and stability.
Loyalty to the Resistance bloc MP Mohammed Fneish told Al-Joumhouria daily on Friday that the operation launched by the Resistance is a legitimate right in an occupied Lebanese region.
“The Lebanese people unanimously agree that the Shebaa Farms is an occupied land,” MP Fneish said.
“The Resistance is ready to deal with any developments and will not change the deterrence equation,” he noted, adding “it will continue to play its role in addressing the Israeli occupation while preserving Lebanon’s security and sovereignty”.
Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah is set to deliver a speech on Friday afternoon during a memorial service for the victims of the Quneitra attack.
The memorial service will be held at the Sayyed Al-Shouhadaa Mosque complex in Beirut’s Southern Suburbs in the presence of Alaeddin Boroujerdi- head of the Iranian parliamentary committee for national security and foreign policy- who arrived to Lebanon on Thursday.
Hezbollah has refused to elaborate on the speech to be delivered by its Secretary General, but sources told Al-Joumhouria newspaper that Nasrallah will announce important positions and may unveil details of the Shebaa Farms operation.
Sources told As-Safir daily on Friday that Qasem Soleimani, a major general in the Iranian Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution and the commander of the Quds Force, met Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and a number of the group’s senior officials upon his arrival to Beirut.
“Soleimani also visited the family of martyr Jihad Imad Moughniyah in the Beirut’s Southern Suburbs,” the sources said.
They added that the commander then headed to the Rawdat al-Shahidayn cemetery in Chiyah and laid a wreath to the grave of Imad and Jihad Moughniyah, before leaving Beirut for Tehran.