Ahead of Syria visit, Lebanon Druze leader Jumblatt says give HTS 'a chance'

Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt voiced optimism on Thursday that Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) could play a positive role in neighboring Syria ahead of his planned visit to Damascus on Sunday, where he will meet with HTS leader Abu Mohammed al-Golani.

Speaking at a webinar hosted by the National Council on US-Arab Relations, Jumblatt, a longtime critic of Assad, compared the images from Syrian prisons to the Holocaust.

"We have seen the terrible pictures of the prisons, I mean, similar to Auschwitz," he said. "You can see how much these people have suffered for decades and decades, and now they are free."

Jumblatt, a prominent figure in Lebanon’s Druze religious minority community, has been a longtime critic of now-deposed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his father, former President Hafez. Jumblatt blamed Syria for the 1977 assassination of his father, Kamal Jumblatt, during the Lebanese civil war. In 2006, Jumblatt called Assad a "whale vomited out of the ocean" and a "snake from which the snakes have fled."

The Assad regime was toppled on Dec. 8 following a stunning rebel offensive led by HTS. 

'Give them a chance'

Jumblatt said during the webinar that he would travel to Syria to meet with Golani, whose nom du guerre is Ahmed al-Sharaa, on Sunday, while calling on the international community to give HTS “a chance” to succeed in establishing a new government in Syria.

“Let’s give them a chance. Give the Syrian people a chance,” he told the council. 

HTS is a designated terrorist organization by the United States, Turkey and others. It follows an Islamist ideology and has its origins in former al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra, but severed ties with the terrorist group in 2016. 

Since the overthrow of Assad, Golani has sought to portray the group as relatively moderate. To this end, he has conducted outreach to Syria’s different religious communities, including the Druze.

Jumblatt stressed that the terror designations of HTS should not be a deterrence to working with the group. He mentioned that other figures in Middle Eastern history, including late Palestine Liberation Organization Yasser Arafat, were similarly labeled as terrorists.

"Arafat was a terrorist. Then he ended up at the at the White House, having the Nobel Prize with (late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak) Rabin,” he said.

Jumblatt said Syria should develop a new constitution that “respects” minorities, human rights and the country’s diversity.

“The new constitution should be very careful not to impose a one-party system,” he said, adding that the signs from Golani in this regard have been “very good.” 

Druze community

Jumblatt said he would not be meeting with members of the Syrian Druze community during his visit, only Golani. According to Jumblatt, this decision is out of a desire to not “interfere” with Syrian Druze affairs. However, he took the opportunity to “warn” them to “be careful about the influence of Israel” through Israeli Druze leader Mowafaq Tarif.

Tarif is the qadi, or spiritual leader, of Druze in Israel. Last week, he reportedly met with Israeli military intelligence chief Shlomi Binder to discuss events in the region.

Jumblatt tied Tarif’s actions to Israel and the United Arab Emirates.

"Who is being helped? Politically speaking, by Israel, of course, by the Emirates, maybe by the Americans,” he said. “Tarif does not represent the Druze of the Middle East.”

Tarif met with UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed earlier this month. The two discussed coexistence and dialogue between different peoples, the official Emirates News Agency reported at the time.

Israeli troops entered the buffer zone between them and Syria in the Golan Heights following the rebel victory and carried out extensive strikes against Syrian military targets. Israeli leaders have described the moves as temporary security measures.

Jumblatt accused Tarif of seeking to legitimize Israel’s presence in Syria and spoke out against any division of Syrian territory along ethno-religious lines.

“If now he's willing to mingle with the Druze of Syria and trying to drag some Druze to the sphere of influence of Israel, we are totally opposed to him,” he said. “Syria should stay united and will stay united with the diverse communities.”

Around 700,000 Druze live in Syria and nearly 200,000 in Lebanon according to the old census. In the summer of 2023, protests broke out in the predominantly Druze region of Suwayda in southern Syria against Assad’s rule. The community previously offered a degree of support for Assad, though their feelings toward the former president were partly motivated by a fear of the rebels, Al-Monitor reported at the time.

In Israel, the Druze population numbers around 150,000. Druze men are conscripted into the Israeli military alongside Israeli Jews. Other Arabic-speaking communities are exempt from military service.