The head of the Democratic Gathering Bloc, MP Taymour Jumblatt, said that he did not remember many scenes of the Lebanese civil war. Born in 1982, he told Asharq Al-Awsat that he had memories as war began to end.
“I remember some scenes… that we were in a state of instability and we moved a lot due to the security situation, between Mukhtara and Beirut and later Syria and Jordan. Of course, there was a constant obsession about lack of safety.”
In an interview with Asharq Al-Awsat on the anniversary of the outbreak of the Lebanese civil war on April 13, 1975, Jumblatt said: “These painful and cruel memories are the most important. They are only part of the collective memory, which needs purification, reconciliation, openness and forgiveness with oneself and with others, in order to move forward.”
According to Jumblatt, “each side fought the war with the conviction that it had the right cause.”
“Everyone, in my opinion, was right in aspects of his case, but also wrong in others,” he underlined, adding: “Regardless of the justifications and circumstances that imposed the war, the Progressive Socialist Party was in the position of defending existence, survival, and identity. We had our cause, except that the whole war was a mistake.”
The son of Druze leader Walid Jumblatt stressed the importance for communication between the country’s rivals.
“The right thing is that we continue to search for dialogue… There is no solution except for dialogue,” he affirmed.
Jumblatt continued: “No matter how much we fight, we return to dialogue, because it is inevitable that we all live in this country in a framework of freedom, diversity, acceptance of others and partnership.”
He said that what is important today is to search for “how to reach stability and build a better tomorrow.”
“On the war anniversary, we remember all the victims who died, the wounded, the families, the missing and the forcibly disappeared, and the grave repercussions… We remember our reconciliation and the importance of adhering to it, because it is the cornerstone of building the future,” he told Asharq Al-Awsat.
Jumblatt called for working towards this path by “forming an effective government, carrying out real reforms that lead to a gradual economic revival, then building political institutions on a sound democratic foundation, and administrative institutions on the basis of efficiency and production.”
