Hasan LakkisHussein Dakroub| The Daily Star

BEIRUT: Lebanon’s influential Druze leader sought Friday to placate his fellow countrymen in Syria, two days after a deadly attack by Syria’s Al-Qaeda affiliate killed 25 Druze villagers, heightening fears that the minority sect in the war-torn neighboring country would be sucked into the bloody conflict.

Describing the killing of 25 Druze civilians in northwest Syria by the Nusra Front as an “isolated incident,” MP Walid Jumblatt warned that any sectarian incitement in Lebanon or Syria would endanger the Druze next door.

The Progressive Socialist Party leader, speaking at a news conference after attending an emergency meeting of the Druze Spiritual Council in Beirut to discuss how to respond to the Nusra Front attack, called for calm and reconciliation with the Sunni majority in Syria.

He said the martyrs who fell during Wednesday’s attack in the village of Qalb Lozeh in the northwest province of Idlib were incomparable to the atrocities committed by the Syrian regime against civilians every day.

“I condemn the incident in Qalb Lozeh which left 20 to 30 martyrs. But at the same time I condemn the [Syrian] regime’s bombardment that kills 150 to 200 people every day throughout Syria,” Jumblatt said.

“We must not forget the tragedy to which the Syrian people are subjected every day. So far, figures say that there are more than 350,000 people who have been killed at the hands of the regime,” he said.

“At the same time, there are more than 7 million displaced people inside Syria and 3 million people displaced outside Syria in Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey.” Jumblatt, a harsh critic of Syrian President Bashar Assad and supporter of opposition groups fighting to topple his regime, warned against sectarian incitement in response to the Idlib attack, saying he would deal with the incident through politics. “It’s true that the incident is a big tragedy. But any thinking or incitement by anyone here or in Syria will endanger the Druze of Syria,” he said. “We should deal with the situation calmly and through politics.”

The PSP chief was apparently responding to Tawhid Party leader former Minister Wi’am Wahhab, a Druze ally of the Syrian regime who in a fiery speech Thursday called for the formation of a “Druze army” to defend Syria’s Druze from Islamist extremists. Wahhab also called on Assad to provide the Druze in the southern Swaida province with arms, and said Lebanon’s Druze youth would volunteer to fight in Syria.

Wahhab and two other pro-regime Druze politicians, Democratic Party leader MP Talal Arslan and former MP Faisal Dawoud, boycotted the Druze Spiritual Council’s meeting, highlighting a split within Lebanon’s Druze community over the Syrian conflict.

Jumblatt said Syria’s Druze sect should seek full reconciliation with the Sunni majority. “There are 25,000 Druze people in north Syria and not more than 500,000 overall, while Syria’s total population is 24 million,” Jumblatt said, adding that such a tiny minority cannot oppose the 75 percent of the population who are Sunnis.

“There is no escape from reconciliation with the majority of the Syrian people. What happened was an isolated incident. I will deal with it politically through my local and regional contacts,” he added.

Health Minister Wael Abu Faour, a close aide to Jumblatt, will begin Monday at the PSP chief’s request a tour of a number of Arab countries that wield influence on the Nusra Front and other Syrian rebel groups in an attempt to find out the Nusra’s true objectives concerning the Druze sect in Swaida, PSP sources said.

Agriculture Minister Akram Chehayeb said the situation facing the Druze sect in Syria was annoying. “The situation will be better with the approaching collapse of the Bashar Assad regime,” he said.

Jumblatt reiterated his call for a political solution based on regional and international consensus to the 4-year-old war in Syria that would remove Assad from power.

“I was the first to call for a political solution in Syria based on American-Russian-Turkish-Iranian-Saudi consensus to finally remove Bashar Assad from power and to preserve institutions,” he said. “There will be no political solution in Syria with Bashar.”

Jumblatt accused the Syrian regime and the “Zionist regime” of sharing the intent to create divisions and fragmentation, adding that Assad was not interested in protecting any minorities including his own Alawite sect.

Speaking after Jumblatt, the Druze spiritual leader in Lebanon, Sheikh Naim Hasan, condemned the Idlib killings and called for the protection of the unity of the Syrian people and avoidance of sectarian strife which, he said, would only benefit Israel. “We are confident that our brothers in Syria will not abandon the banner of Syrian unity, brotherhood and reconciliation with their countrymen and their neighbors throughout Syria,” Hasan said.

The Idlib killings were the deadliest since Syria’s civil war started in March 2011 against the minority Druze sect, which has been split between Assad’s supporters and opponents, but has largely stayed out of the fighting.

For his part, MP Arslan said that Syria’s Druze were strong enough to defend themselves, accusing Israel of orchestrating the Idlib killings. He said that the “takfiri terrorists” and Israel were “two sides of the same coin.”

He criticized the media for depicting Syria’s Druze as weak and in need of protection, and warned that any attack on Swaida would be suicidal.

“There is a conspiracy in the Arab media, supported by Israel and the West, to distort the image of Druze in Syria and say that they are weak and fearful,” Arslan told a news conference. “Jabal al-Arab will be the graveyard of whoever attacks it.”

Arslan said the Idlib killings were orchestrated by Israel to incite strife between Druze and Sunnis. “I cannot but link what happened with the Druze in Idlib to the joint Israeli-takfiri plan to undermine Syria,” he said.