J’accuse

Walid Jumblat accused Hezbollah for the first time of being part of the assassinations. Was this a tactical move or an emotional outburst?

Did you hear the one where Hezbollah killed Hariri?

What was obvious from Mr. Jumblat’s body language is that he was nervous and angry. The statement was made in an atmosphere of renewed tension between his PSP party and Hezbollah, where Minister Marwan Hmedeh who is very close to Jumblat, accused the Almanar TV station of and sued it for inciting his assassination (Mr. Hmedeh has already been subject of a failed assassination attempt)

What’s notable is that Hariri’s Almustaqbal newspaper, which usually cheerleads Jumblat’s hardline stances, has completely ignored Hezbollah’s part of Jumblat’s speech and chose instead to focus its headlines on the part where Jumblat accuses president Assad of Syria of being a liar. Could Hariri, who quietly slipped to Saudi Arabia this morning, be distancing himself from Jumblat’s statements?

Hezbollah denied Jumblat’s accusations and said he doesn’t have any evidence to support them. Al-Akhbar, a newspaper close to Hezbollah, wrote that Jumblat’s hardline position was designed to sabotage a new initiative by speaker Nabih Berri, an initiative the newspaper claims to be coordinated with Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries, where a government of 3 March14 Ministers, 3 opposition Ministers and 4 neutral ones would oversee new elections and arrange for the Paris 3 donors’ conference.

Jumblat, who has a history of sabotaging Arab initiatives designed to co-opt Syria, might be playing America’s role in Lebanon by refusing fudge solutions that put brotherhood and cooperation ahead of justice and accountability.