Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Miqati condemned on Tuesday Israel's use of Lebanese airspace to carry out airstrikes on Syria, telling the ambassadors of the five permanent U.N. Security Council members that Lebanon rejects being shoved into the Syrian crisis.

Miqati informed the ambassadors at a meeting at the Grand Serail that was also attended by U.N. Special Coordinator for Lebanon Derek Plumbly that the Lebanese Armed Forces were incapable of fully controlling activity on the porous border with Syria for lacking the appropriate equipment.

Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi, who is currently abroad, dispatched on Tuesday Beirut Bishop Boulos Matar to President Michel Suleiman, al-Mustaqbal bloc leader Fouad Saniora and caretaker Minister Wael Abou Faour as part of efforts to resolve the elections crisis.

“We discussed the elections and the electoral law that we are looking forward to in Lebanon,” the bishop said after meeting Saniora.

The Lebanese army's intelligence arrested on Tuesday a Palestinian man who admitted to robbing a currency exchange firm in a Beirut district a day earlier.

The military said in a communique that it arrested Samir Fouad Deaybes, a Palestinian, in the area of al-Aqbiyeh in Tyre.

Regional players, including Hizbullah, are intervening more and more openly in Syria, some emboldened by the chaos created by the conflict, others desperate to prevent the fall of the regime, experts say.

The conflict between President Bashar Assad's government and rebel forces has divided the Middle East, with his allies -- Iran and Hizbullah -- lined up against Gulf states which back the uprising.

The families of the nine Lebanese pilgrims kidnapped in Syria since May last year pressed on Tuesday their demands to release the men despite the “lack of progress” in the case.

The relatives held a sit-in near the Turkish cultural center and the Turkish Airlines offices in downtown Beirut. The state-run National News Agency said they were joined by Syrian laborers.

Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi has welcomed a meeting held between Lebanese Forces chief Samir Geagea and caretaker Energy Minister Jebran Bassil on the electoral law.

Al-Rahi, who is currently visiting Brazil, told a delegation from Lebanese Christian parties in Sao Paulo that “Bkirki is at an equal distance from everyone” and that he is “in daily contact with the Christian parties.”

Al-Mustaqbal lawmakers rejected on Tuesday to provide legitimacy to a parliamentary session set for May 15 if the rival parties failed to reach consensus on a new electoral law.

In remarks to the Kuwaiti al-Anbaa daily, MP Ahmed Fatfat said al-Mustaqbal “will not give legitimacy to the session” set by Speaker Nabih Berri if the so-called Orthodox Gathering proposal was put on its agenda.

Israel's weekend strikes on Syria may have sent regional tensions soaring, but life in Haifa was carrying on as normal on Monday, with locals adamant they are ready for any counterattack from Lebanon.

On the streets of this northern port city, where Israel on Sunday deployed a battery of its vaunted Iron Dome anti-missile system, the effect of the bombings was far from palpable, with people sipping cool drinks in outdoor cafes.

Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun on Monday called on “the nations supporting the armed groups in Syria” to seek the “immediate release” of two Christian bishops kidnapped near Aleppo on April 22.

In an open letter he addressed out of his “belief in the need to break the silence in the case of the two kidnapped bishops of Aleppo,” Aoun said “the situation in Syria has reached the most horrible level.”

A man was arrested on Monday for killing his mother, 14 years after he was convicted with murdering his sister-in-law, the state-run National News Agency reported.

"The suspect hit his mother on the head with an agricultural mattock inside the family's home in (the Chouf town of) Wadi Bnehlay,” the NNA detailed.