Barry Rubin: Happy New Jumblatt! A Lebanese Leader Gets Brave and What it Means

Happy New Jumblatt! A Lebanese Leader Gets Brave and What it Means

By Barry Rubin

Happy New Jumblatt! What’s a Jumblatt? Well, it’s a joke that tells us a lot about Middle East politics. A friend of mine created the “Jumblatt” as a unit of time, one complete rotation in the political maneuvers of Lebanese Druze leader, Walid Jumblatt.

For example, during the previous Jumblatt, he moved from being a stalwart client of Syria to join the March 14 Coalition to push Syrian troops out of Lebanon. At the peak of the last Jumblatt, he gave a rather unforgettable interview which I will paraphrase here (note: this is my wording not a precise quote):


Interviewer: Is it true that you called Syrian President Bashar al-Assad a dog?

Jumblatt: Yes, I did. But I want to apologize to all dogs for comparing them to Assad.

But like all Jumblatts the last one came to an end.

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Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). His latest book is Israel: An Introduction, to be published by Yale University Press in January 2012. You can read more of Barry Rubin's posts at Rubin Reports, and now on his new blog, Rubin Reports, on Pajamas Media

Technorati Tag: Syria and Assad and Jumblatt.