Walid Jumblatt says Arab leaders must wake up to Israeli expansionism

Anyone looking for clues to the ambitions of Israeli expansionism should read the Bible, Walid Jumblatt, the leader of the Druze in Lebanon, has told Middle East Eye.

With Israeli forces launching a new offensive in Gaza, and with their fellow soldiers deployed across the West Bank, southern Lebanon and Syria, Jumblatt warned that the prospect of a “greater Israel” inspired by biblical borders could not be disregarded.

“We used to say a long time ago that greater Israel stretches from the Nile to the Euphrates. It seems it’s being slowly but surely accomplished,” Jumblatt said.

The 75-year-old is a canny survivor of the complex political and diplomatic intrigues that have swirled over the region for decades, as well as of Lebanon’s long civil war during which Jumblatt rose to prominence after his father, Kamal Jumblatt, was assassinated in 1977.

Speaking at his home in Beirut as US President Donald Trump was touring the Gulf, Jumblatt said there was no one left to protect the Palestinians, either in the region or the rest of the world.

New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch

Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters

He was contemptuous of Gulf leaders who plied Trump with multi-billion-dollar contracts and gifts. He called them “hooligans”, and did not give any credence to the view that they could persuade Trump to stop Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s increasingly personal crusade in Gaza.

He bleakly predicted that Gaza would be “totally eliminated”, with more than two million Palestinians forced to leave.

After that it would be the turn of the Palestinians in the West Bank - and eventually also the East Bank, in what is now Jordan.

“They said that Moses is buried somewhere there. Who knows [where Israel’s military campaigns will stop] because you are dealing with history, ideology. We have got to read the Bible again,” Jumblatt said.

But the veteran leader, whose Druze-dominated Progressive Socialist Party (PSP) was once allied with the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), was adamant the struggle for Palestine would continue, even after the current battle is over.

“Arab soldiers are good soldiers, very good soldiers. And the Lebanese resistance and the Islamic resistance are excellent soldiers. But now you are facing a new technology. Maybe one day, we'll have this technology. We'll fight them with their own weapons. We're not inferior. And they're not superior,” he said.

Meeting Ahmed al-Sharaa

Jumblatt was confident that Israel would not succeed in its efforts to split Syria into three by unilaterally announcing it would protect the Druze in the south and the Kurds in the north.

Israel has seized territory in southern Syria, including the strategic summit of Mount Hermon, since the overthrow of the Assad dynasty in December and the emergence of a transitional government led by President Ahmed al-Sharaa.

Earlier this month, Israel's leaders said air strikes it carried out near the presidential palace in Damascus were intended as a warning to the new government that it would act against any threat to the Druze in the south of the country.

Jumblatt welcomed US President Donald Trump’s decision to lift sanctions on Syria and described Sharaa, whom he has now met twice, as a “very clever man”.

“He knows what he wants and in five months he has been able to make the world recognise him,” Jumblatt said.

He revealed that he is now working with Sharaa to incorporate the Syrian Druze armed factions into the Syrian army.

He said he went to Damascus to tell the Druze of Lebanon, Syria and Israel that he recognised the legitimacy of the new ruler in Damascus.

“I went to Damascus and we are working with him on a way to incorporate Syrian Druze armed men … slowly but surely, into the new apparatus of the state. This is the only way to calm some fears of the Druze.”

Jumblatt dismissed the appeals to Israel for help from Mowafaq Tarif, the spiritual leader of the Druze in Israel.

He said Sheikh Tarif could not act on behalf of Israel, or issue pronouncements on behalf of the Druze in Syria or Lebanon because his community is “too small” to do so.

This is not the first time Jumblatt has clashed with Sheikh Tarif.

Before Bashar al-Assad’s fall, Jumblatt sent Tarif a letter condemning him for receiving Netanyahu in the aftermath of an incident in the Israeli-occupied Syrian Golan Heights town of Majd Shams, in which 12 civilians, among them 10 children, were killed.

Israeli officials blamed a Hezbollah rocket for the deaths, but residents - who are mainly Syrian Druze - blamed shrapnel from an Israeli Iron Dome missile.

Israel has a small Druze community which historically is divided politically from the 24,000 Druze who live in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, which it captured from Syria in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

The Druze inside Israel are citizens and serve in the Israeli army, although there have been protests among some in their community at serving in Gaza. The Syrian Druze in the occupied Golan mostly refuse Israeli citizenship.

Jumblatt said the Druze did not seek Israel’s protection: “It does not protect anybody historically speaking, so let them keep their nice feelings towards us to themselves.”

Lebanon’s President Joseph Aoun won plaudits at home for saying that Hezbollah’s disarmament would come through dialogue and not through force.

But hehas come under pressure from Washington to speed up the disarmament of Hezbollah, brushing aside fears this could lead to civil strife.

'There is a ceasefire from one side only. The Israelis are daily infringing the ceasefire, with bombings and killing'

- Walid Jumblatt

Jumblatt said Hezbollah is already being disarmed by the Lebanese Army, of which Aoun was formerly commander in chief.

But he said Israel’s repeated violations of a ceasefire deal agreed in November were an “anomaly” that complicated the situation.

“There is a ceasefire from one side only. The Israelis are daily infringing the ceasefire, with bombings and killing. And this could yet lead to some trouble,” he said.

Jumblatt said it was very important to incorporate Hezbollah fighters into the army, but it was equally important to reconstruct the homes in the borderland that were demolished by Israel.

Nearly one quarter of all buildings in municipalities near the border were demolished, according to analysis of satellite data by the Washington Post.

“Why should we link the reconstruction of the south to the rearrangement of the banking sector? We should not. Until now, the Americans are forbidding any attempt to reconstruct and to give us money.”

Hezbollah outgunned

Hezbollah stepped up rocket attacks against Israel in response to Israel’s attack on Gaza, forcing at least tens of thousands of Israelis to evacuate from towns and villages in the north of the country.

Israel responded in September 2024 by launching massive air strikes which killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and other senior officials, and then with a full-scale ground assault on southern Lebanon in October 2024.

Jumblatt said Hezbollah had fought bravely but been massively outgunned.

Hezbollah not only had big gaps in their intelligence but believed they could maintain a balance of power with Israel, he said.

“It proved to be nonsense, because we are fighting a totally new technology, which is western technology. On the ground they fought very well but the price of that fight was terrible on the Shia in the south and elsewhere. And they were also infiltrated by the enemy - as we saw when Nasrallah was killed.”

Jumblatt has a complicated history with the Lebanese militant group. Having supported the resistance for over three decades, and having opposed the US-led wars against Iraq in 1991 and 2003, he switched sides in 2005 after the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

Jumblatt aligned himself with the anti-Hezbollah, US-backed “March 14” political alliance. In 2006 he blamed Hezbollah for provoking Israel’s 33-day war.

However, he soon became disillusioned with American policy and is deeply sceptical today of the notion that US policy in Lebanon and the region has any chance of succeeding.

Although he stepped down as leader of the Progressive Socialist Party in 2023, Jumblatt retains the political aspirations of the party founded by his father, which attempted to cross confessional red lines.

“We have to change the constitution. We have to make the religious groups in Lebanon understand that it’s for their sake and for our sake. Confessionalism is obstructing the unity of the Lebanese.”

But Jumblatt said Lebanon should never normalise with Israel while it occupies land in Syria and Lebanon.

“Let's keep our stand with Israel as we keep the armistice agreement. No war and no peace. No peace is safer for Lebanon than making peace. You don't know where you end up with peace with Israel,” he said, laughing.

middleeasteye.net