(2 Mar 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Beirut, Lebanon – 3 March 2025
1. Exterior of Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt’s house
2. Wide of briefing
3. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Walid Jumblatt, Lebanese Druze leader:
"The free Syrians must be cautious of the plots of Israel."
4. Wide of briefing
5. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Walid Jumblatt, Lebanese Druze leader:
"I do not believe that those who united Syria in the days of Sultan Pasha (prominent historic Druze Leader in Syria) and his comrades, Syrian Arab nationalists from all Syrian regions, will respond to what is called (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu’s invitation to sabotage, aimed at isolating the free Arab Maaroufi (the Druze) from their Arab and Islamic surroundings and turning them into mere border guards."
6. Media
7. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Walid Jumblatt, Lebanese Druze leader:
"Israel wants to use tribes, sects and religious groups for its own benefit, it seeks to fragment the region. This is an old-new project that we encountered in Lebanon at a certain stage and it failed. Despite the heavy losses Lebanon suffered, it failed. But today, Israel wants to expand and its Torah-based project knows no borders."
8. Wide of briefing
9. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Walid Jumblatt, Lebanese Druze leader:
"Greater Israel, yes, it seeks to achieve Greater Israel. Yes, this is the responsibility of Arab leaders before it is too late."
10. Media
11. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Walid Jumblatt, Lebanese Druze leader:
"We have been and will remain against reconciliation with Israel until a Palestinian state is established one day and a solution is found for the refugees who fled from occupied Palestine in 1948."
12. Wide of Jumblatt leaving
13. Exteriors of Jumblatt’s house
STORYLINE:
A prominent Druze Lebanese leader said Sunday that he will soon visit Syria to meet its interim leader as tensions simmer between members of the minority group, the war-torn country’s interim government, and Israel.
Walid Jumblatt made these remarks at a news conference following a statement from Israel’s defense ministry announcing that the military was instructed to prepare to defend the city of Jaramana and protect the Druze in the outskirts of Damascus, Syria, following clashes between Druze gunmen and government security forces.
It also comes as Israel, since the downfall of former Syrian President Bashar Assad in December, has pushed military into southern Syria to create a demilitarized buffer-zone.
In the Druze-majority southern province of Sweida, many who protested against the Assad government in recent years also protest against Israel’s airstrikes and military push into the country.
“The free Syrians must be cautious of the plots of Israel,” said Jumblatt, who accused Israel and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of creating sectarian division and chaos in the country.
The Druze religious sect is a minority group that began as a 10th-century offshoot of Ismailism, a branch of Shiite Islam.
Over half of the roughly one million Druze worldwide live in Syria.
Most of the other Druze live in Lebanon and Israel, including in the Golan Heights which Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Mideast War and annexed in 1981.
Jumblatt is one of Lebanon’s most prominent political leaders and arguably the Mideast’s most powerful Druze figure.
He is both an outspoken critic of Israel and a supporter of the Palestinians but also spoke out against the Assad dynasty in Syria.
AP video shot by Ali Sharafeddine
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