Free Patriotic Movement chief Jebran Bassil on Friday said anew that he is in favor of “peace with Israel,” while adding that such a peace would have its “conditions.”“I would like to see us reaching peace with Israel and Hizbullah does not agree with me in this issue,” Bassil said in an interview on LBCI television, a few hours before electoral silence begins for Sunday’s parliamentary elections.“We must reach peace but peace has its condition,” he added.
Bassil is hardly a model politician - he has been accused of corruption. He is the son-in-law of the current president Aoun and has been head of the FPM since 2015.
Still, to mention peace with Israel as a campaign issue in a country that has traditionally been among the most antisemitic is significant. If he didn't think it could gain him votes, he wouldn't be talking about it.
In the 2018 election, the FPM gained 29 of 128 parliament seats, about 14%, so he can be a power broker in the elections. (I could not find any recent polling in Lebanon to see how different political parties are doing.)
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