Controversial Sour project halted after Army chief intervention

BEIRUT — The Green Southerners association wrote on its Facebook account Thursday that it had learned the Defense Ministry executed the order to halt work on the Shwakir site in Sour, on the orders of the Army's commander in chief, General Rodolphe Haykal.

This intervention follows a decision made by Sour's summary affairs judge, Yolla Ghotaimi, on May 15, after complaints were filed by associations opposing the project. Until then, despite the judge's decision, work continued at the site. A military source confirmed to L’Orient Today that General Haykal indeed ordered compliance with the judge's decision, but did not provide further details on halting the current work.

The project under construction in this area of Sour presents multiple issues and brings together many detractors. On a large plot allocated to the Defense Ministry by the state for decades, a project commenced in September 2024, stopped during the two-month expansion of the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, and resumed after the November 2024 cease-fire.

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Controversy over project for the Lebanese Army near Sour reserve

According to information obtained by the Lebanese Committee for the Preservation of Sour – communication around the site being very opaque – the project would cover 400,000 square meters and indeed include an officers’ club, but this is far from its only purpose. The site, under a BOT contract between the Defense Ministry and a private partner (agreed upon during the previous government's term), planned extensive commercial areas.

The two major problems posed by this project, is that it encroaches on one hand into the buffer zone of the Sour marine reserve, and on the other hand, it is situated in an area rich in unexplored relics, notably, as reiterated by the Lebanese Committee for the Preservation of Sour, one of the three ancient Phoenician ports of the city, that of Paleo-Sour. Culture Ministry also recommended suspending the work. According to association information, among the reasons for this judiciary decision, no study has been carried out anticipating the protection of all these sites.

This intervention by the army’s commander in chief, which seems to have been decisive since activists note no particular activity on the site for two days, delights the president of Green Southerners, Hicham Younès. However, “a definitive indicator of the work's stoppage would be the transportation of construction vehicles off the site, as well as the dismantling of the concrete mixing station,” he told L’Orient Today. He also mentioned “the massive stockpile of debris abandoned on the site, which needs to be transported elsewhere.”

This debris, resulting mainly from the last conflict between Hezbollah and Israel in southern Lebanon, has left dozens of tons of potentially contaminated backfill. Hence the Green Southerners' call to remove it from an environmentally sensitive area close to a marine reserve known for its biodiversity.