Jumblatt: Who makes the decisions to negotiate?
MP Walid Jumblatt, head of the Democratic Gathering bloc, said it is not right for Hezbollah and Syria to conduct prisoner exchanges with Israel and carry out negotiations with the Jewish State while the Lebanese are deprived of the right to follow the truce signed between Beirut and Tel Aviv in 1949.
“Why can’t the Lebanese state call for placing the Shebaa Farms under the supervision of the UN?” Jumblatt asked in an interview to be published tomorrow in the PSP-run weekly Al-Anbaa. “Why is everyone calling for this accused of treason?”
Jumblatt also told the paper that many events raise questions about the fate of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, including the recent violence in the country, the impossible conditions MP Michel Aoun (who he refers to as the Mugabe of Lebanon) is imposing, the Israeli-Syrian peace negotiations, the establishment of the government, Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad’s upcoming visit to France, and the resignation of UN Undersecretary General for Legal Affairs Nicolas Michel.
He added that the Special Tribunal is no longer being brought up in political conversations, “in spite of the fact that it is the only way to deter political killing in Lebanon and to punish assassins.”
Jumblatt said that some parties’ insistence on turning Lebanon into an open ground for regional and international struggles to be fought will lead to the country’s destruction.