Walid Joumblatt, former head of the Progressive Socialist Party, called on Sunday for a return to the 1949 Armistice Agreements, which imposed a specific zone along the border between the Lebanese and Israelis with restrictions on armaments. He conveyed this matter to the Speaker of Parliament, Nabih Berri, in Ain al-Tineh.
The purpose of Joumblatt’s visit was to offer Berri his condolences regarding the deaths of the Amal fighters killed on Friday night by an Israeli raid and to show his “solidarity with the inhabitants of southern Lebanon.”
After the meeting, he declared “the need to break down the wall of hatred and find an agreement regarding the implementation of Resolution 1701 that all sides would accept.”
In response to a question, Joumblatt denied any correlation between the presidential election and the war in Gaza and southern Lebanon. He considered that “those who refuse dialogue (to unblock the election of a president of the Republic) are wrong to do so.”
To recall, the Armistice Agreements of 1949 put an end to the first Arab-Israeli war, which broke out in May 1948. An initial ceasefire on January 7, 1949, to end all hostilities.
The Armistice Agreements that followed, between Israel on the one hand and Syria, Egypt, Transjordan, and Lebanon on the other, fixed the demarcation lines.
As for Lebanon, an armistice agreement was signed on March 23, 1949, at Ras al-Naqoura. It had been agreed that formal peace treaties would subsequently be signed, but the lines drawn at Rhodes became de facto borders, which were later modified by other conflicts.
