Saad Hariri in downtown Beirut, before delivering a speech, Feb. 14, 2025. (Credit: Mohammad Yassine/L'Orient-Le Jour)
BEIRUT — Saad Hariri, son of assassinated Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, announced the return of his party, the Future Movement, to politics, during a speech on Friday marking the 20th year since his father's death.
"This movement will remain and will be your voice in all upcoming elections and stations,” he told a crowd of around 70,000 gathered at Martyr's Square for the commemoration. Saad Hariri was Lebanon's prime minister twice, from 2009 to 2011 and then again from 2016 to 2020. He withdrew from politics and left the country in 2022 after failing to form a government.
“Twenty years ago, in this square, you demanded justice, and by your own will, you expelled the criminal regime of Bashar al-Assad from Lebanon," the former prime minister said, referring to the Cedar Revolution that was sparked by Rafik's death and lead to former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad withdrawing his troops from Lebanon two months later, ending a 15-year Syrian occupation.
“There is no escape from achieving justice," he told the crowd of supporters on Friday, "This is an occasion to announce our support for the will of the Syrians, for the stability and reconstruction of Syria, and our will for the best relations of equality from one state to another with full respect for sovereignty and independence, as the new Syrian leadership has repeatedly declared."
A portrait of Ahmad al-Sharaa, Syria's new interim president and leader of a coalition of opposition forces that brought down Assad, was mounted in Martyr's Square. It depicted Sharaa flanked by Rafik, Saad and his older brother Baha' Hariri, as well as Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman and former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
Rafik Hariri was largely believed to have been assassinated on orders from the now-defunct Assad regime, which was toppled in December after a 13-year civil war that ripped the country apart. “Rafik Hariri's project continues, and those who tried to kill it, look where they are now,” Saad said.
Rafik Hariri was assassinated on Feb. 14, 2005, when his convoy was blown up by a massive truck bomb that exploded as he drove past, leaving a 30-foot-wide crater in the ground outside the legendary Saint George Hotel on Beirut's waterfront. Twenty-one other people were killed alongside Hariri and more than 200 injured.
Several figures involved in the investigations into Rafik's killing were also assassinated themselves and no one was ever arrested for the attack, although a special international tribunal found one senior member of Hezbollah guilty. None of the suspects were questioned or stood trial themselves. The U.N.-backed court's panel of judges also declared that it had no evidence proving that either Hezbollah leadership or the Syrian government were directly involved in Hariri's killing.
‘I will remain by your side and not leave you’
Lebanon is reeling from the effects of a devastating period. An all-out war between Hezbollah and Israel during the fall of 2024 saw Israel launch a massive bombing campaign against large swaths of eastern and southern Lebanon. “Our responsibility is to restore the unified Lebanese body and rebuild the destroyed areas,” Saad said during his speech.
“In these twenty years ... many crises have exhausted the Lebanese, and we have never denied that part of the responsibility lies with us," Hariri said. "We shouldered our responsibility with courage, and I submitted my resignation, and we suspended political work, and we made room for three years or more, and the crises remained and increased,” he claimed.
“It is the time for me to tell you that just as you have been by my side for 20 years, stood by my side and did not leave me, I, in turn, will remain by your side and stand with you and will not leave you," said the former prime minister, who in April 2023 was accused by two flight attendants hired to work on his private jet of "brutal workplace rape."
“Crises have multiplied, the latest and most dangerous of which is a crazy, criminal Israeli war that targeted our country, killed our people, and destroyed their homes, institutions, crops, and society,” he said.
“I bow before all the martyrs of our people in the South, the Bekaa, Beirut, the suburbs and all the regions. I raise my head with the solidarity you expressed during the war, when you opened your homes to the afflicted and received the displaced and said in action,” he said.
During the Israeli war on Lebanon which escalated on Sept. 23, many families from across Lebanon opened their homes to receive those displaced from southern Lebanon, the Bekaa and the South.
Lebanon has a ‘golden opportunity’
Hariri noted that Lebanon has a “golden opportunity,” now that a President was elected and Cabinet has been formed after over two years of a double executive vacancy.
“To our people in the South, the Bekaa and the suburbs, I say: You are partners in this opportunity and without you, it cannot be achieved. But, you must break any previous impression that you are a force of obstruction,” he said.
“The problem with Netanyahu is escaping responsibility, escaping from peace to war, a problem of occupation, killing and displacement of a people, and it cannot be solved at the expense of Egypt, Jordan or the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,” he explained.
U.S. President Donald Trump announced a surprise plan earlier in February to “clean out” the Gaza Strip, expelling Palestinians to Egypt or Jordan. Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia have explicitly rejected and condemned the idea.
“We are with the state and our national army, and with every effort they make to impose the full implementation of the cease-fire and Resolution 1701, meaning the withdrawal of the Israeli occupation from all the villages in which it still exists,” Hariri said.
The resolution calls for a full cessation of hostilities, the deployment of the Lebanese Army in southern Lebanon, and the expansion of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL). It also demands the disarmament of all armed groups in Lebanon, including Hezbollah, and the prevention of the supply of weapons to those groups.
Israel is set to withdraw from southern Lebanon on Feb. 18, but has called for an extension of its withdrawal. The United States has repeatedly promised that Israel will withdraw on the 18th.
Since the beginning of the conflict on Oct. 8, 2023, to Nov. 26, 2024, Israeli forces killed at least 3,961 people across Lebanon and injured at least 16,520.
Reporting contributed by Sarah Abdallah and Michel Hallak
