Hizballah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah met Thursday night with Druze leader Walid Jumblatt to discuss the aftermath of the June 7 parliamentary elections. The apparent Shiite/Druze reconciliation comes nearly two weeks after Hizballah’s March 8 block failed to win a majority in parliament.
Hizballah candidates had a solid showings in their districts, however, and its leadership stressed the need for the Saad Hariri-led March 14 majority to work with the opposition in the coming months to break the deadlock plaguing the Lebanese national political system. Jumblatt was a key player in the March 14 alliance, so his meeting with Nasrallah is encouraging and demonstrates a conciliatory political climate in Lebanon these days.
The apparent reconciliation is aided by the cooling of external rivalries that have great influence in Lebanon. This includes the relationship between Saudi Arabia and Syria, and the relationship between Syria, Iran and the United States.
According to Al Manar TV, the lengthy meeting, that took the form of an in-depth review of the past stage and discussed the coming stage in Lebanon and the region, seemed to draw a roadmap for the upcoming phase that would be marked by the “wider reconciliation” and therefore was hailed by the Lebanese various groups and factions as a “first step.”
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