A sit-in was held on Tuesday in front of the Lebanese General Directorate for Vocational Education in protest against the Lebanese government’s decision to allow Syrians residing in Lebanon illegally to enroll in technical institutes and schools for the 2024-2025 academic year.
The decision started a public outcry, with some politicians denouncing a suspicious plan to settle Syrians in Lebanon.
The leader of the Lebanese Forces (LF), Samir Geagea, denounced on his X account “a flagrant violation of Lebanese laws and sovereignty.” For him, this decision by the caretaker government of Prime Minister Najib Mikati is “a blatant threat to Lebanese identity.”
Geagea warned against “the recent Mikati Cabinet decision 63/2024, which not only authorizes the enrollment (admission) of all Syrian students present on Lebanese territory in official technical institutes and schools, regardless of their legal status, but also opens the door to Syrians in Syria, Jordan, Turkey and everywhere else in the world to do the same.”
For the LF leader, “this is the joke of the moment, or rather the scandal of the moment, and it’s not over yet,” he warned.
LF MP Antoine Habchi echoed this view, saying that the government’s decision “resembles the (1969) Cairo Agreement (which authorized the presence of armed PLO guerrillas in Lebanon), and the way it was adopted reflects the desire to eliminate Lebanon’s existence.”
Habchi urged the Cabinet “to immediately reverse this decision,” adding that “it is forbidden to settle Syrians” in Lebanon. The LF parliamentarian promised that they would “do everything necessary to annul this decision.”
The Council of Ministers had authorized the Ministry of Education to issue certificates for Syrian students who passed the official technical baccalaureate exams in Lebanon. This move enabled the Ministry’s Director of Technical Education, Hanadi Berry, to authorize Syrian students without official residency documents (provided by the Lebanese General Security) to register for the 2024-2025 school year.
