Jumblat Urges Need to Aid Displaced Syrians as they Continue to Pour into Lebanon

Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblat noted that it would be unacceptable for Lebanon to remain idle in its approach towards Syrians who have fled to Lebanon to escape their country’s crackdown against anti-regime protests, reported the daily An Nahar on Sunday.

He told the daily: “They should be granted aid and social guarantees regardless of their numbers.”

An Nahar revealed that Damascus had informed Lebanese authorities that it had urged them to prevent Syrian women and children from entering Lebanon without “special permission.”

It noted a spike in the number of Syrians in recent weeks in the North, as well as the South, especially in the Zaharani, which “prompted some official and political powers to take security measures to monitor their activity.”

Some powers warned that these displaced may turn to refugees regardless of the fate of the Syrian regime, cautioning against establishing temporary “Syrian camps that may turn into permanent ones.”

Jumblat had said Saturday that Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah should have announced his backing for the Syrian people rather than defend Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime.

“I would have hoped that for Syria’s sake he would directly address Assad and tell him that Syria is more important” than anything else, the MP told As Safir.

“I wish that he told him to be realistic, particularly that there could no longer be any reform in Syria after all the bloodshed,” the Druze leader said.

During a televised speech on Thursday, Nasrallah said he was ready for unconditional dialogue with his March 14 foes and renewed his support for Assad, accusing Arab and Western states of seeking to topple the Syrian president.

Nasrallah’s “support for the Syrian people is much more important that his support for the regime and its deluding reform,” the PSP chief told As Safir. “Sayyed Hassan knows what I mean and I don’t want to go into a public confrontation with him.”