BEIRUT — Saad Hariri, son of assassinated Prime Minister Rafik Hariri reached out to his "great friend" Walid Joumblatt on the anniversary of the latter's own father's assassination, calling for collaboration toward realizing their killed fathers' ambitions toward a "lasting spring."

"It is true that the blood of Kamal Joumblatt and Rafik Hariri has united us," Hariri said in a statement relayed by state-run National News Agency. "But the greatest common denominator between us remains the pursuit of realizing their dream by working with everyone for a lasting spring."

Kamal Joumblatt was the leader and founder of Lebanon's Progressive Socialist Party (PSP) and head of the National Movement during the Lebanese Civil War. Sunday marks the 48th anniversary of his assassination by unidentified gunman who blocked his car just a few hundred meters from a Syrian checkpoint in the Chouf district and gunned it down, killing Kamal, his driver and his bodyguard. The 60-year-old politicians was a vocal opponent of the Syrian occupation of Lebanon and many consider the now-topped Assad family regime as having been behind his death.

"To my great friend Walid Jumblatt, and to the comrades in the Progressive Socialist Party, this year the anniversary of the assassination of leader Kamal Jumblatt comes with the arrest of the primary suspect in his murder, after years of protection and rewards," Hariri said.

Ibrahim Houeija, a former Air Force intelligence chief under ex-Syrian President Hafez al-Assad, was arrested in the coastal city of Jableh by the new Syrian authorities earlier in March. The official Syrian news agency Sana reported that Houeija is accused of hundreds of assassinations under Hafez, including overseeing Kamal's assassination.

“Forty-eight years ago, the regime of Hafez al-Assad assassinated Kamal Jumblatt and sent his army into Lebanon on his blood," Hariri said. "After 28 years, this army left the blood of Martyr President Rafik Hariri. We awaited earthly justice for Kamal Jumblatt, Rafik Hariri, and their companions, but it did not vindicate us, yet the justice of God cannot be escaped.”

Walid Jumblatt, Kamal’s son, has since become a prominent political leader in Lebanon, continuing his father’s legacy and heading the PSP. In June 2023, Taymour Joumblatt officially assumed the reins of the PSP, succeeding his father, Walid, as the leader of the party.

“Today, we are in a new phase that requires all of us to cooperate in its success, under the banner of building a normal state where weapons are solely in the hands of the army and official security forces," Hariri said, "with the constitution as the final arbitrator, and where everyone falls under the umbrella of the state—only the state—so that Lebanon is first, in word and deed."

It is widely believed that Saad's father Rafik was also assassinated on orders from the Assad regime, which was toppled in December after a 13-year civil war that ripped the country apart.

Rafik was assassinated on Feb. 14, 2005, when his convoy was blown up by a massive truck bomb that detonated 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 were injured.