Uniting The Opposition
Jumblatt chaired the Afro-Asian People’s Conference in 1960 and founded the same year, the National Struggle Front (NSF) (جبهة النضال الوطني), a movement which gathered a large number of nationalist deputies. That same year, he was reelected Deputy for the fifth time and the NSF won 11 seats within the Lebanese Parliament. From 1960 to 1961 he was Minister for the second time, for the National Education portfolio and then in 1961 he was appointed Minister of Public Work and Planning. From 1961 to 1964 he served as Interior Minister.
On 8 May 1964, he won at the parliamentary elections for the sixth time. In 1965, he began joining together Arab nationalist and progressivist politicians into a Nationalist Personalities Front. In 1966 he was appointed Minister of Public Work and Minister of PTT. He also represented Lebanon at the Congress of Afro-Asian Solidarity, and presided over the parliamentary and popular delegation to the People’s Republic of China in 1966.
He supported the Palestinians in their struggle against Israel for ideological reasons, but also to garner support from the Palestinian fedayeen based in Lebanon's refugee camps. The presence in Lebanon of large numbers of Palestinian refugees was resented by most Christians, but Jumblatt strived to build a hard core of opposition around the Arab nationalist slogans of the Palestinian movement. Demanding a new Lebanese order based on secularism, socialism, Arabism and an abolition of the sectarian system, Jumblat began gathering disenchanted Sunnis, Shi'a and leftist Christians into an embryonic national opposition movement.
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