A number of Lebanese politicians and relatives of slain president-elect Bashir Gemayel on Friday welcomed death sentences issued in absentia for the two suspects convicted of carrying out the assassination – Habib Chartouni and Nabil al-Alam.

More than three decades after Gemayel was killed in Beirut, the case still sharply divides Lebanese some of whom see him as a national hero while others say he was an Israeli agent.

The Judicial Council, Lebanon's highest state security court, on Friday sentenced Habib Chartouni and Nabil al-Alam to death in absentia in the case of the 1982 assassination of President-elect Bashir Gemayel.

The Council also stripped Syrian Social National Party members Chartouni and Alam of their civil rights.

Israeli forces have attempted to abduct a Lebanese shepherd from the southern border region of Shebaa, the Lebanese Army said on Friday.

“Two troops from a foot patrol belonging to the Israeli enemy crossed the line of withdrawal at 1:35 pm yesterday and penetrated around 50 meters into territory disputed by Lebanon in the Shebaa area of Jabal al-Seddaneh,” the army said in a statement.

President Michel Aoun on Friday said Lebanon should not wait for a "political or security solution" in Syria to address the burdensome Syrian refugee crisis.

“We will not await a political or security solution in Syria and we rather have a duty to defend the interest of our country,” Aoun said at the beginning of a Cabinet session at the Baabda Palace.

Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi said on Friday that displaced Syrians and Palestinians have become a “great burden on Lebanon and must return home,” as he stressed “humanitarian solidarity with their causes.”

“It is our duty as Lebanese to preserve our country and its specifications for the benefit of all of us, and for Lebanon to carry out its mission in its Arab environment,” said Al-Rahi, adding “that is why all the displaced and refugees must return back to their land and country.”

Al-Mustaqbal Movement MP Ammar Houri said on Friday that the approval of the 2017 state budget was a “step in the right direction.”

“Although most of the budget has been used-up due to the fact that we are approaching the end of 2017, but this budget is a foundation for the 2018 budget which will take matters to better public financial regulation,” Houri told VDL radio (93.3) in an interview.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called on the Lebanese to “move towards the full implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1559,” recalling the Lebanese government's “international commitment to disarm Hizbullah and the rest of the armed groups,” al-Joumhouria daily reported on Friday.

“The participation of Hizbullah and other Lebanese groups in the conflict in Syria violates the international resolution, the Baabda Declaration and the dissociation policy and constitutes a threat to Lebanon's stability,” said Guterres in a semi-annual report to the UN Security Council on the implementation of Resolution 1559.

The Lebanese Forces party described any future visit by a Syrian minister to Lebanon as “provocative” and “overriding” Lebanon's judicial ruling against the Syrian regime over its involvement in the deadly 2013 bomb blasts in the northern city of Tripoli, al-Joumhouria daily reported on Friday.

“The visit of any Syrian minister to Lebanon will be just a tourist visit and a provocative one to a large segment of the Lebanese who stand surprised by the continued disregard of the judicial rulings against the Syrian regime which has been accused in the bombing of the two mosques and Michel Samaha's explosives,” LF sources told the daily.

The parliament on Thursday approved the 2017 state budget – Lebanon's first state budget in 12 years – following three days of arduous debate.

Sixty-one MPs voted in favor of the bill, four lawmakers from the Kataeb Party voted against as eight other lawmakers abstained from voting.

Akkar MP and State Minister for Refugee Affairs Moein al-Merehbi walked out angrily of a parliament session on Thursday evening in protest at failure to earmark funds for projects in the impoverished regions of Akkar and Baalbek-Hermel.

Speaker Nabih Berri clarified that the law prevents the Parliament from adding funds to the state budget, but Merehbi walked out, announcing “his withdrawal from his ministerial and parliamentary posts.”