Posted on 01/21/2011 9:15:30 AM PST by edpc
Lebanon's Druze leader Walid Jumblatt said on Friday his group was committed to support the Islamist movement Hezbollah ahead of parliamentary talks on Monday to pick a new prime minister.
Jumblatt leads a bloc of 11 parliamentarians and his support is crucial to decide who forms the new government out of the two rivals: Hezbollah or the caretaker Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri, who said on Thursday he will seek the premiership.
"I am announcing the right political stand...by assuring the steadfastness of the group (Progressive Socialist Party) alongside Syria and the resistance," he told a news conference.
Resistance is a term used to describe Hezbollah.
(Excerpt) Read more at haaretz.com ...
"The tribunal has become a threat to national unity and security as well as a tool of blackmail in Lebanon," he [Jumblatt] added.
Nevermind the fact the findings are likely very accurate and is the first time the UN has been right in a long time.
Ping for your ME list.
How suicidal are the Druze to support the Syrian-backed Hezbollah, which has no use for such religious dissidents? From what I’ve read, the Druze in Israel are far more reasonable, even participating in the IDF.
I think that the Lebanon Problem requires a three-state solution, with separate Christian, Sunni and Shi’ite nations (in hindsight, it was a mistake for the French to push for a Greater Lebanon with so many Muslims instead of a smaller Mount Lebanon with a large Christian majority). Christians will never again become a majority within Lebanon’s borders, and their rights will not be respected so long as Muslims have a majority.
Druze leader Walid Jumblatt reconciles with Syria
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8596899.stm
Pic: http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/47566000/jpg/_47566903_008953406-1.jpg
I remember Jumblatt as a player in the protracted War in Lebanon.
Druze are an outgrowth from Islam. They are not Chistian, not Jew and say they are not Islam. (but they act Islamic) They are as much an ethnic tribal group as a religion. Have read that they do not accept “converts”.
I had a very good Lebanese Christian friend who considered the Druze as Islamic. He despised them. Based on my respect for my Lebanese Christian friend, I would not trust them at all.
Apparently the LAF has deployed all over the country in anticipation for some kind of move over the weekend by Hezbollah.
If you’d like to be on or off, please FR mail me.
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Thanks edpc.
I was really pulling for you AdmSmith:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2657477/posts?page=15#15
Yes, we should never forget that this is ME. The only rule is that are no rules and your friend today might be your enemy tomorrow...
Anything can happen the next few days. PFLP-GC is carried out a military exercise at their Qosaya base in the Bekaa today, and in Tripolis in Northern someone exploded a grenade.
sorry: Tripolis =>Tripoli
Many parts of Lebanon have been populated almost exclusively by Muslims for centuries, and were included in independent Lebanon only because the French (i) thought that a state limited to the Mount Lebanon area and Tripoli and Beirut would be too small to survive (so they drew the borders for a 55% Christian Lebanon instead of a smaller but 80%+ Christian Lebanon) and (ii) assumed that Christians from other parts of the Middle East (where Muslim states were being created would flock to Lebanon while Lebanese Muslims would move to Muslim countries. Suffice it to say, the French grossly miscalculated, and Christians from other countries never moved to Lebanon and Lebanese Muslims stayed put (and were joined by many Palestinian Muslims) while Lebanese Christians kept emigrating to the West, dropping the Christian percentage from around 55% to around 35%. It would be very difficult for Christian Lebanese to form a stable government over all of the land currently within Lebanon’s borders, even if there was mass migration of Muslims to Syria, Jordan, etc.
By “mass migration” I wasn’t implying that all Muslims would leave. Let’s say half of the Muslims leave, with the remaining population being around 55% Christian. That would leave heavily Muslim areas throghout a large chunk of Lebanese territory, and such a large Muslim minority nationally that Lebanon could end up back where it was in 15 years or so. I think that a safer route is to shed of those areas that were not truly Lebanese (and were Muslim majority) in 1920 that the French insisted in including in “Greater Lebanon” and have an instant 85%+ Christian Lebanon. But then again, I’m saying this while sitting thousands of miles away, and almost 100 years since my great-grandparents left Zgharta, so I can’t claim to have all the answers.
” had a very good Lebanese Christian friend who considered the Druze as Islamic. He despised them. Based on my respect for my Lebanese Christian friend, I would not trust them at all.”
Druze are a very odd deal; I don’t pretend to understand their religion. I believe the purport to consider Jethro (father-in-law of Moses) their prophet, but I very well could be wrong.
As a tenant of their religion, they are good citizens of the country where they live -— in Israel, they are great Israeli citizens.
In Lebanon, they are loyal to the Islamists.
Long story short, before condemning them as people (whatever one thinks of their religion), figure out where they call home.
Druze
My Lebanese Christian Friend had experience with them in Lebanon (he spoke Arabic and spent years in the Balkans after WWII - He knew the typical Muslim mindset). I understand that Jumblatt blamed Syria (probably correctly) for the assination of his father. It is odd that he would now align himself with Syria, and he recently has.
Lebanon has experienced much trauma at the hands of the “Islamists”. Even many of the Muslims do not like what Syria and Iran have done to them through their surrogates in Lebanon. That is how the Cedar Revolution took place. I pray that Gemayel is able to put together a coalition that will allow Lebanon to maintain independence. Of course Syria and Iran are going to do their best to crush that.
Even many of the Muslims in Lebanon realize that the only way life can be peaceful in their country is with the stability brought by the Maronite and Greek Orthodox Christians.
Leadership should always fall to the hands of those who have moral and religious beliefs that insure a sense of fairness, never to those who only know how to destroy things.
Thanks for your input into understanding the Druze. In some countries they have a reputation of honesty. Islamists never do. Syria and Iran only have a history of lies and deception. “Al-Taqiyya”
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