Jumblatt vows solidarity with Syria against Israel

The head of Lebanon’s Progressive Socialist Party (PSP) Walid Jumblatt vows solidarity with Syria in the face of what he calls ‘a frenzied Israeli attitude.’

“Amid the Israeli madness and radical threats, I tell the Syrian people and leadership that we are with you above all else,” he said in a statement issued by the PSP and quoted by pan-Arab A-Sharq al-Awsat newspaper, the Lebanese portal Naharnet reported on Friday.

He said, “We took our decision a long time ago on who is the enemy and who is the friend … Syria is our strategic depth.”

Israel seized Syria’s strategic Golan Heights as well as the neighboring Shebaa Farms in Lebanon in the 1967 Middle East war. The Zionist regime continues to ignore the territorial claim of the respective countries over those areas.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak recently said Syria should clinch a peace deal with Israel or find itself in a “full-fledged war” with Tel Aviv. A few days later, the entity’s hawkish Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman threatened the Syrian President Bashar Assad with another war in which “his family will lose power” on top of a military defeat for the country.

Jumblatt, like other leaders in Lebanon, expressed concerns over a new Israeli war on Lebanon amid the “failure of peace efforts” and US policies in the region.

“The entire region was in a state of chaos,” he warned. “In the presence of such chaos, the Israelis could launch a new war.”