Walid’s Childish Antics

01/06/2026

By Hicham Bou Nassif | Weinberg Associate Professor of International Relations and the Middle East and George R. Roberts Fellow at Claremont McKenna College-California

Numbers do not lie. These are the figures for Druze voting in the last parliamentary elections, according to researcher Jean Nakhoul. More than 100,000 Druze cast ballots, of whom the Jumblatt leadership received around 52,000 preferential votes. This means that the common image of the Druze as a closed community wholly aligned behind Walid Jumblatt is inaccurate. Nearly half of the community is not with him. Moreover, the protest movement (Forces of Change) won more than 24,000 votes, making it the second-largest force among the Druze.

As an aside, Forces of Change secured around 18 percent of the Sunni vote, collecting more than 80,000 Sunni votes, and 10 percent of the Christian vote, amounting to more than 54,000 votes. Among Shias, it received less than 4 percent, or around 21,000 votes. By comparison, the Druze, who gave Forces of Change nearly a quarter of their votes, appear to be the Lebanese community most restless under its traditional leadership and most open to change.

All of this occurred before the horrific massacre that struck the Druze of Suwayda in Syria, leaving behind a wave of anger among Lebanese Druze toward Walid Jumblatt because of his bet on President Ahmad al-Sharaa. Political calculations can be right or wrong, and humility is always necessary. Yet the indicators suggest that Jumblatt’s share of the Druze vote in the next elections is unlikely to improve. Who knows? Lebanon may witness, for the first time since the end of the civil war a slight majority of Druze votes going to figures outside the leadership of Mukhtara. This is a background to Walid Jumblatt’s recent performance.

In religiously homogeneous societies, a politician who senses his popular base shrinking is compelled to offer serious solutions to everyday problems. At the very least, he must pretend to care about issues such as the rising cost of living, employment opportunities, healthcare coverage, and similar concerns. In contrast, life is much easier for politicians in societies polarized along sectarian lines. All they need to do to shore up a shaky leadership position is rally their community, invent disputes with leaders of other groups, and engage in incitement.

This is what Jumblatt has been doing for some time. In fact, incitement is virtually all he does. It is worth recalling that among all the former wartime leaders, Walid Jumblatt is the only one who still celebrates its bloody episodes. He did so only a few months ago when he suddenly revived the anniversary of the “liberation” of Western Chouf. “Liberation” is Walid Jumblatt’s code word for ethnic cleansing, killing people based on their identity, and expelling them from their homes — including many who had spent decades voting loyally for his father.

Today, Jumblatt has manufactured a dispute with Samir Geagea in remarks made to a French newspaper. Social media quickly filled with vicious exchanges of insults between supporters of Jumblatt and supporters of Geagea, while no one could identify a single serious Lebanese issue that was being addressed by inflaming tensions between the bases of the Lebanese Forces and the Progressive Socialist Party. Meanwhile, bloodshed continues in the south, and Lebanon’s tragedy unfolds in ever more chapters.

In the immediate term, Lebanon needs the disarmament of the Shia militia, Hezbollah, that turned our country into an advanced Iranian outpost in the region and pushed Lebanese internal polarization to unprecedented levels. In the longer term, Lebanon needs two things: neutrality, so that our country ceases to be an arena for regional conflicts and wars; and federalism, so that Lebanon’s communities can guarantee one another’s right to self-determination regardless of demographic changes, and so that regions outside Beirut and Mount Lebanon can develop independently, free from the struggle over power in the capital. These are needs shared by all Lebanese, including the Druze. Yet they are overshadowed by the social media shouting matches triggered by Jumblatt’s description of Geagea as “Moses.”

I am not a supporter of Geagea. If I were, I would refrain from attacking Walid Jumblatt, because inventing a conflict with the Lebanese Forces immediately revives memories of the war and the wounds it left among the Druze, thereby strengthening the leadership of the Jumblatt family within the community — which is all that matters to the former leader of the Socialist Progressive Party. Nor am I, of course, a supporter of Jumblatt, although my paternal grandfather spent a lifetime voting faithfully for Kamal Jumblatt election after election. If I were a Jumblatt supporter, I would recognize that Christians in Lebanon are a community seeking security and peace of mind, as we say colloquially, and pose no threat to the Druze or to anyone. Likewise, the Druze pose no threat to Christians or to anyone else. Manufacturing a Druze-Christian conflict is absurd under any circumstances. Under the current circumstances, it is downright surreal.

May we therefore ask the billionaire Walid Jumblatt — who at times amuses himself by insulting the Maronites as an inherently flawed people, and at other times by inventing disputes with their leaders for unclear reasons — to find another way to combat boredom and reinforce his increasingly fragile leadership?

This article was originally published in Arabic by Nida al-Watana on 1 June 2026. The original can be found here.

The views expressed in this op-ed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of SyriacPress.