'There is already a regional war': Veteran Lebanese politician calls on West to stop arming Israel
Jumblatt said chaos will continue in the Middle East if Israel's attacks go unchecked
Walid Jumblatt knows about war. He has lived much of his life in it.
As a militia leader during Lebanon’s civil war and leader of the Druze sect, he has been part of a the successes and failures of Lebanese society.
He has stood against Hezbollah, railed against the West and sought reconciliation with both to varying degrees. Now, he says he is out of hope.
Earlier this week, 12 Druze children, living in the Israeli occupied Golan Heights were killed in a rocket attack. Israel says that rocket was fired by Hezbollah.
Others believe the children were killed by a misfire of Israel’s iron-dome protection.
Whatever the truth, the deaths of those children has fuelled a bloody week and raised the prospect of even greater bloodshed.
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The assassination of a senior Hezbollah military commander was Israel’s official response, shortly after that attack came the killing of the political leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, in Iran.
Walid Jumblatt rarely gives interviews, in part because he knows the dangers of words and the incapacity of them.
Speaking to him this week was to speak with man out of hope for the future of the Middle East.
“Already we have a regional war, we don’t need further escalation, already we are afraid of further escalation,” he told me.
He is clear where he places the blame.
Jumblatt said Israel will do "whatever they want" if the US and Britain continue to support them with arms
“If there is no pressure to stop the state of Israel, ruled by Netanyahu, to attack anywhere, everywhere, wherever he wishes, whenever he wants - I see more bloodshed, chaos and anarchy.
"Nothing is stable in this area in the Middle East. I see the West Bank being annexed, the end of the illusion of a two state solution.”
Of the West, and the governments which claim to be trying to broker peace, he can muster little more than derision and a wish for an end to arms sales to Israel.
“The main sponsor of the state of Israel is the west, the USA, Britain.
"If you don’t stop giving Israel weapons and ammunition and you don’t sanction in Europe, they will do whatever they want," he said.
Jumblatt said he condemned the recent killing of 12 children in the Golan Heights
The killing of the 12 children in Majdal Shams at the weekend has only added to his sense despair for the future.
He respects the request by the families that no political capital or further bloodshed is made from the deaths.
“I condemn the attack and the murder of 12 children but compared to what is going on in Gaza, thousands and thousands of children killed in Gaza by Israelis," he said.
"If Netanyhu wants to weep on the people of the Golan, these are conquered lands, they are not Israeli lands, they are conquered lands by Israel. They are Arabs, they are Syrians.”
In 2006, Walid Jumblatt was described by the Americans as the man who, for better or worse, was perhaps the single person most responsible for where Lebanon was then.
Today, he has no stomach for battle and little power to stop what is unfolding around him.
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