Kamal Fouad Jumblatt (Arabic: كمال فؤاد جنبلاط; 6 December 1917 – 16 March 1977) was a Lebanese politician who founded the Progressive Socialist Party.

[3] He is the father of the Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt and the son-in-law of the Arab writer and politician Shakib Arslan.

Jumblatt then pursued higher studies in France, where he attended the Faculty of Arts at the Sorbonne University and obtained a degree in psychology and civil education, and another one in sociology.

He returned to Lebanon in 1939, after the outbreak of World War II and continued his studies at Saint Joseph University where he obtained a law degree in 1945.

In 1943, at the young age of twenty-six years and following the unexpected death of Hikmat Joumblatt, he became the leader of the Jumblatt clan, bringing him into the Lebanese political scene.

In practice, it has been led and largely supported since its foundation by various segments of Lebanese society, especially members of the Druze community, and the Jumblatt clan in particular.

Prior to the 1952 elections, Jumblatt declared the formation of the opposition salvation front electoral list in a rally on 18 March 1951 in the village of Barouk, Mount Lebanon.

A year later, he was the main leader of a major political uprising against Camille Chamoun's Maronite-dominated government, which soon escalated into street fights and guerilla attacks.

While the revolt reflected a number of political and sectarian conflicts, it had a pan-Arabist ideology and was heavily supported through Syria by the newly formed United Arab Republic.

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.

Demanding a new Lebanese order based on secularism, socialism, Arabism and abolition of the sectarian system, Jumblatt began gathering disenchanted Sunnis, Shi'a and leftist Christians into an embryonic national opposition movement.

In 1970, he was once again appointed Minister of the Interior, a reward for his last-minute switch of allegiance in the presidential election that year, which resulted in Suleiman Franjieh's victory by one vote over Elias Sarkis.

The LNM was further joined by Palestinian radicals of the Rejectionist Front, and maintained good relations with the officially non-committal Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

In April 1975, a series of tit-for-tat killings culminating in a Phalangist massacre of Palestinian civilians, prompted full-blown fighting in Beirut.

In August 1975, Jumblatt declared a program for reform of the Lebanese political system, and the LNM openly challenged the government's legitimacy.

During the period between 1975 and 1976, Jumblatt acted as the main leader of the Lebanese opposition in the war, and with the aid of the PLO the LNM rapidly gained control over nearly 80% of Lebanon.

However, this claim proved to be wrong for Israelis invaded Southern Lebanon in 1978 under the pretext of defending its northern borders from any possible Syrian aggression.

Some 40,000 Syrian soldiers invaded Lebanon in 1976 and quickly smashed the LNM's favourable position; a truce was declared and the fighting subsided.

During a pan-Arabic conference in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in the same year, an agreement was signed which included the presence of a Syrian military peacekeeping force under the auspices of the Arab League.

[21] Born in the Druze faith, Kamal Jumblatt adopted Christian teachings at his alma mater, the Lazarus Fathers Institute in Aintoura.

He would regularly attend mass with his fellow students, and was found reciting Catholic prayers several years later over his cousin Hikmat Joumblatt's deathbed.

[25] In 2015, Walid Jumblatt accused two Syrian officers, Ibrahim al-Hiwaija and Mohammed al-Khauli, as being responsible for killing his father.