Jumblatt: Israel’s yellow line in southern Lebanon may swallow parts of Syria policy

Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt said that Israel has drawn a “yellow line” in southern Lebanon that crosses the Hermon Peak and extends to Syria, near Damascus, and may extend in the future to include part of Hauran and Daraa Governorate in southern Syria.

He added in an interview with the French newspaper Le Monde that, through the systematic destruction of Lebanese villages and the expulsion of their residents, Israel is applying the same methods it adopted in Gaza, which left about a million Lebanese displaced and about 60 villages razed to the ground.

Regarding disarming Hezbollah, Jumblatt said, “There is only one armed force in Lebanon, which is Hezbollah, and therefore who will risk fighting it? Even the Lebanese army will not do that because it is a mixed force that includes, among others, Shiite soldiers. Is it reasonable for Shiite soldiers to go to fight Hezbollah under orders from Israel and the United States? This is simply impossible for them.”

Jumblatt indicated in his interview that the Lebanese state has no room for maneuver unless the United States forces the Israelis to withdraw from southern Lebanon and actually commit to a ceasefire, but this is pure fantasy, as he put it.

The Druze leader added that Hezbollah launched a war against Israel in support of the Hamas movement after October 7, 2023, and then a second war after the assassination of Iranian leader Ali Khamenei, stressing that the party alone cannot be held responsible for these wars because “we do not know what Israel’s true intentions are. It is waging war just for the sake of war in Gaza, in Lebanon, in Iran, and in the West Bank.”

The Druze issue

Jumblatt believes that the Israeli war has taken the form of an expanding colonization, and that soon there will be no lands left to establish a Palestinian state there, which is no longer “just an illusion,” with the danger of dismantling the old formula for the Near East, resulting from the Sykes-Picot agreements, to replace it with a countless number of sectarian and tribal entities, in the manner of Iraq since the American invasion, according to him.

On the other hand, Jumblatt believes that the stability of Syria is essential for the stability of Lebanon, and that Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa is slowly consolidating his power, and this will take a long time, and he must take control of a country torn apart by more than 10 years of civil war and sectarian massacres.

Regarding the Syrian Druze, Jumblatt believes that “they chose the path of separation, and I chose my path, the path of Damascus and Arabism. They call me a traitor, but I consider the disintegration of Syria to be part of the Zionist plan to Balkanize the entire region.”