- 16:05
Instead of properly closing a case that should never have existed, the report published on November 13 about the Jeita Grotto incident only deepens the concern, revealing a far more troubling reality. Institutional and scientific oversight is disturbingly lax. Procedures are improvised, responsibilities evaporate, decisions are made without a solid framework, and nothing suggests that the authorities have learned anything from this episode.
What this supposedly “technical” report ultimately exposes, is that Lebanon’s most iconic natural site, once celebrated in a national campaign to become a world wonder, now stands vulnerable to improvisation, opacity, and outright amateurism.
A Private Ceremony
The incident began on October 31, when a pre-wedding ceremony took place deep inside the Grotto. The Ministry of Tourism quickly sought to shift responsibility, noting that the site is temporarily managed by the municipality, pending a tender for long-term management. According to the ministry, the Jeita municipality authorized the reception without a written request, prior consultation, or coordination with the required experts.
The municipality downplayed the event, describing it as a thirty-minute pre-wedding reception with no food or drinks and insisting that all technical precautions had been taken.
Fifteen days after the grotto’s temporary closure, the second in less than a year, it is now set to reopen on Saturday. This follows the release of the so-called final report from the commission of experts tasked with assessing the event’s impact, published Thursday by the Ministry of Tourism.
Lawyer Mark Habka says the report exposes a triple major problem. It reveals a glaring lack of professionalism and irresponsibility on the part of the Minister of Tourism and the State, who treated a heritage site of immense significance with alarming negligence. He stresses that the matter touches on national security, as the grotto is a central part of Lebanon’s natural heritage.
Habka also criticizes the government for failing to activate proper institutional mechanisms. “A parliamentary inquiry commission should have questioned the minister, determined why the event was authorized, what procedures were followed, and what precautions the municipality was supposed to take. None of this happened,” he says.
What the Report Reveals
The report concludes that the October 31 private event caused no immediate damage: no new fractures, no falling limestone, and no disruption of the cave’s biological system. While superficially reassuring, these findings hide a more serious problem.
The inspection was purely visual, conducted without instruments, sensors, or baseline data. No continuous scientific measurements were taken, and there was no protocol to compare conditions before and after the event. From the first pages of the report, it is evident that the experts had no historical data to rely on. Lebanon’s most visited cave, once a tourism flagship, has no scientific archive to track even the slightest changes in its geological formations. For a site once promoted as a potential world wonder, this lack of monitoring is a damning oversight.
According to Habka, the experts themselves acknowledged their limits. The report explicitly states that accurate assessment requires instrumental measurements and prior data. Yet by their own admission, no database or scientific archives exist. Under these conditions, a precise evaluation is impossible. Habka concludes that this absence of data constitutes a serious failure in a matter of this magnitude.
A Site at Risk
The contrast between the grotto’s significance and the minimal resources devoted to its protection is striking. Jeita, which attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors each year, lacks permanent monitoring of CO₂ levels, humidity, or temperature – factors essential to the growth of limestone formations and the stability of the ecosystem. The temporary closure allowed these parameters to return to equilibrium, showing that even a single unusual event can disrupt a delicate balance. This raises an urgent question: how could a ceremony be authorized in such a fragile site without prior instrumentation, strict scientific oversight, or a proper risk assessment?
The report also highlights further areas of concern. In the upper cave, concrete structures anchored in the rock for decades now require regular inspections to ensure their stability. These installations, visited daily by the public, had never been formally monitored. Here, the threat stems not from the October 31 event itself, but from years of neglect. The grotto is endangered not only by isolated incidents, but by a state that repeatedly relies on improvisation.
Even more troubling, no legal action has been taken. No public service, institution, or authority has been held accountable. There has been no inquiry into how the authorization was granted, no clarification of administrative responsibilities, and no assessment of potential failings. The incident risks fading into obscurity, like so many other heritage cases in Lebanon, where responsibility dissolves and institutions prefer to close files rather than investigate.
The technical report may seem thorough, but it omits the essential questions: how did it come to this, and who is responsible for this decision?
Calls for Accountability and Lasting Protection
Reacting to the situation, Habka emphasized that this dysfunction is part of a much larger pattern. We live in a country of impunity. In the case of the cable cars, for example, no authority has assumed any responsibility. Anything concerning citizens’ safety is systematically neglected. He called on the judiciary to take the matter seriously, urging the courts and the public prosecutor to recognize that this case directly concerns Lebanon’s natural heritage. Such cases cannot continue to be left unresolved.
The experts’ recommendations finally offer a path toward proper management. They call for permanent acoustic monitoring, strict decibel limits, prohibition of deep bass, regulated events, the presence of acousticians, and reduced visitor capacity. These are common-sense measures based on international best practices. Yet, they also highlight a troubling question: why were these safeguards not already in place? Why must an entirely preventable incident occur before Lebanon acts to protect one of its few remaining intact natural treasures?
The November 13 report achieves one thing: it shows what the grotto has not lost. Yet it says nothing about what it could lose if this pattern of chaotic management continues. The real question is no longer whether the October 31 event damaged Jeita, but whether the Lebanese state is prepared to prevent the next incident, or whether it will continue to leave its natural wonders at the mercy of improvisation and administrative silence.
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