Jumblatt is the first Lebanese figure to meet Sharaa since his Islamist group HTS and allied rebel factions launched an offensive last month, seizing Damascus on 8 December and ousting longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad [Getty]
The political head of Lebanon’s large Druze community, Walid Joumblatt has met the head of Syria’s Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) Ahmed al-Sharaa in Damascus, alongside other Syrian officials after a 13-year absence from Syria, according to Lebanese media reports.
Jumblatt is the first Lebanese figure to meet Sharaa since his Islamist group HTS and allied rebel factions launched an offensive last month, seizing Damascus on 8 December and ousting longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad.
The Druze leader, long a fierce critic of Assad and his father Hafez who ruled Syria before him, headed a delegation that included his son and head of Lebanon’s Progressive Socialist Party (PSP) Teymour Joumblatt, the Druze spiritual leader (Sheikh al-Aql) Sami Abu al-Muna, and other Druze MPs and members of the community’s religious council in Lebanon, according to reports.
He met with Sharaa – until recently known more widely by his nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Jolani – at the presidential palace, where the new Syrian leader was wearing a suit and tie.
“From Mount Lebanon…  we salute this nation who got rid of tyranny and oppression. Greetings to you and to everyone who contributed to this victory,” Joumblatt said, addressing Sharaa.
“We hope that Lebanese-Syrian relations will return through the embassies, that all those who committed crimes against the Lebanese people will be held accountable, that fair trials will be held for all those who committed crimes against the Syrian people, and that some of the prisons will remain museums of history,” he added.
Sharaa reassured the delegation that Druze and other minorities in Syria would be protected, adding that no sect would be excluded in what he described as “a new era far removed from sectarianism”.
“We take pride in our culture, our religion and our Islam. Being part of the Islamic environment does not mean the exclusion of other sects. On the contrary, it is our duty to protect them,” he said during the meeting with Jumblatt, in comments broadcast by Lebanese broadcaster Al Jadeed.
Sharaa also told the Lebanese delegation that his country would no longer exert “negative interference in Lebanon at all – it respects Lebanon’s sovereignty, the unity of its territories, the independence of its decisions and its security stability”.
Syria “will stay at equal distance from all” in Lebanon, Sharaa added, acknowledging that Syria has been a “source of fear and anxiety” for the country.
Jumblatt accuses the Syrian authorities of having assassinated his father in 1977 during Lebanon’s civil war. Numerous other assassinations have been blamed on the Assad family’s government over the decades.
The Syrian army entered Lebanon in 1976 as part of an Arab force that was supposed to put an end to the country’s civil war, which began a year earlier.
But instead it became the dominant military and political force, looming over all aspects of Lebanese life.
Syrian forces only quit Lebanon in 2005 after enormous pressure following the assassination of former prime minister Rafic Hariri, a killing attributed to Damascus and its ally Hezbollah.
