24 December 2023

Tyre, Lebanon – Two candles illuminate the church in Tyre with a dim glow. It is silent, besides the slow, soft chants of a prayer in Arabic.

At the start of the service, just a few members of the Maronite congregation sit in the pews.

The service will continue into the evening, when the quiet prayers will become Christmas hymns sung by children from the southern Lebanese city.

“We are praying for peace,” Father Saab Yaacoub told Middle East Eye before the service began. About 20km south of Tyre, fighting is escalating between Israel and the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah.

Just hours before the service on Thursday, a woman was killed in an Israeli bombardment of her home in the border village of Maroun al-Ras. Her husband was severely injured.

Underneath the church is a Byzantine-era room that dates back to the second century. Its walls have withstood the test of time, the stones still stuck together despite earthquakes, floods and wars over nearly two thousand years.

Tyre is one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world. Thousands of years ago, around the ninth century BCE, the Phoenician port city was the most powerful in the Mediterranean, according to the book Tyre by archaeologist Ali Badawi. 

According to local belief, Jesus is said to have strolled the city’s streets, barefoot after his shoes were stolen. The city is also believed to have witnessed one of Jesus’s miracles, when he cured a woman’s daughter who had a devil inside her. The nearby village of Qana is where Jesus is said to have turned water into wine, his first miracle.

Tyre has also stood through millennia of conflict and conquest. It was occupied by the Egyptians, Romans, Crusaders, Ottomans, the French and, more recently, the Israelis in the 1980s. 

Now another round of conflict is erupting outside the city’s ancient walls, as Israel and Hezbollah exchange almost daily attacks. Although the violent exchanges between Israel and Hezbollah have been mostly restrained since 7 October, fears are growing that an “all-out” war may soon break out.

“We are praying for those under bombardment. Those living in the south [of Lebanon] and also those in Gaza,” Father Yaacoub said.