ISLAM-CHRISTIAN DIALOGUE

14 the country, which now has about 3 mil- lion inhabitants. Lebanon is the only Arab nation with flourishing Christian communities that were once majority. But in the drama that is going on today, is it still true? In the future, will Christians still be able to maintain their rights there? Fifteen years of war have changed the physiognomy of the territory. Lebanon has been for all an example of inter-religious coexistence, founded on fraternity between the various religious confessions, until the moment when ex- ternal powers began to seed dissension between Muslims and Christians and al- lowed too many refugees to settle in this small territory whose size is just less than half the size of Lombardy. Moreover, the establishment of a strongly militarized Jewish state broke the fragile balance of power that exists in the Middle East. International Destabilization: This interference in the domestic affair of the country caused the first civil war whi- ch started as early as 1958 and then gra- dually paved the way for future destabili- zation, culminating in 15 years of internal warfare. Various entities participated in this conflict, destabilizing the Christian majority (Iranians, Syrians, Israelis, Li- byans, Algerians and Palestinians). The war caused more than 120,000 deaths, 300,000 injuries and more than a million displaced civilians forced to take refuge in confessional ghettos. More than 1,300 priests have been slaughtered; churches and convents with centuries of history behind them have been looted and de- stroyed. Many people were killed on the sole basis that they belonged to a parti- cular religion. These horrors have been ignored by the international media in contrast to their protest against the vio- lence exerted against the stone throwing Palestinian youth during the intifada. The turbulence of the region has pushed, since the beginning of the century, many Lebanese to emigrate to the West. It is estimated that there are an estimated 13 million Lebanese in the diaspora, mostly Christians, compared with a million and a half Christians left behind. They are scat- tered as follows: North and Central America 5 million South America 7 million Oceania 500 thousand Europe 300 thousand Gulf countries 300 thousand Emigration to the Gulf countries is usual- ly temporary because it is mainly due to work reasons and generally ends with the return to the country. The proportion of Arab-Christians who emigrated from Lebanon to the West is 7 to 1 compared to those who remained; a proportion that has been increasing in recent years under the impassive eye of the whole West. Integralism in ambush The key to curbing migration is peace in the region. In this sense we bring a state- ment by Boutros Ghali, secretary of the United Nations: "There can be no deve- lopment without peace and there can be no peace without development". The problem of the reconstruction of Lebanon remains open because the pri- vate leaders are not inclined to invest in infrastructure preferring instead the real estate and tourism sector. The investor who aims to make a profit in the short term is not concerned about projects that generate new jobs and create the conditions to encourage private indu- strial initiative of peak and medium size. The lack of job prospects encourages the emigration of middle managers, techni-