●Jumblatt's 14 February 2007 speech: "tyrant of Damascus, an ape nature never knew"

On 14 February 2007, on the second anniversary of Hariri's assassination, before a crowd in Martyrs' Square beside the 8 March sit-in, Walid Jumblatt addressed Bashar al-Assad without naming him: "O tyrant of Damascus, O ape nature never knew, O snake the snakes fled from, O whale the seas spat out, O beast of the wilds, O liar and Hajjaj in Iraq, criminal and butcher in Syria and Lebanon", called him "an Israeli product", and demanded that the weapons be handed to the army; Jumblatt himself later counted it a "very violent" speech that he had to explain before his reconciliation with Damascus in 2010. Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah answered two days later (16 February) that the opposition had faced the shooting at it "with patience and wisdom", that "neither the opposition governs nor are those in power able to govern", and that some forces wanted no solution even if given the international tribunal.