BEIRUT: MPs Walid Jumblatt and Talal Arslan both condemned Thursday's deadly fighting in the predominantly Druze area of Syria's Mount Hermon Friday, but Lebanon's top two Druze leaders' condemnations exposed the wide gulf between their stances on the Syrian civil war.
Jumblatt, head of the Progressive Socialist Party, warned against dragging Druze into the Syrian conflict, while Arslan, Lebanese Democratic Party chied, said the Druze were paying the price for supporting a unified Syria.
“Beware of using the Druze to face the revolution,” Jumblatt, who generally support the opposition, wrote in a tweet.
In what appeared to be a message addressed to anti-rebel Syrian Druze, Jumblatt said: “I have already warned of the dangers of involvement with the Syrian regime.”
“It’s time for reconciliation with the surrounding and to stand neutral,” he added. "Sooner or later the Syrian people will win.”
But Arslan, who has different views on the conflict next-door, said Syria’s Druze were “paying the price for standing alongside a united Syria ... and for the sake of maintaining their dignity and honor and their existence.”
He said Druze villages in the eastern part of Mount Hermon were the target Thursday of a war waged by “terrorist supporters and those carrying the scheme to fragment the region.”
“What is happening today in Mount Hermon increases our commitment to our principles and [increases] our insistence to adopt the resistance project altogether,” Arsal said in a statement.
“We will not retract our faith that victory shall be ours at the end.”
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 40 people have been killed in clashes between pro-Syria regime forces and opposition fighters, including the Nusra Front.
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