By Breitbart News Network | Created at 2024-12-13 15:56:39 | Updated at 2024-12-23 23:17:13
1 week ago
A group of Druze Arab villages in southwestern Syria have asked to be part of Israel rather than rebel-held Syria, according to reports and to videos circulating on social media.
The Druze Arabs live in the mountainous region of the Levant, in territory that overlaps with Israel, Lebanon, and Syria. They have their own religion, which is roughly one thousand years old, and which is separate from Islam, though it includes elements of the three monotheistic faiths.
Druze Arab mother and daughter walk through Yanuh-Jat, Israel. November 11, 2023 (Joel Pollak / Breitbart News)
The Druze tend to be attached to the land rather than to any particular nation, though they are typically loyal citizens of the countries where they reside. In Israel, some Druze Arab communities opted to join the draft for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), and many have served with distinction, including in the current war.
The late Lt. Col. Salman Habaka of the 53rd tank battallion of the IDF. He was killed in battle in Gaza in November 2023 while rescuing soldiers of the elite Golani brigade. (Courtesty Habaka Family)
When Israel took the Golan Heights from Syria in the defensive Six-Day War of 1967, some Druze communities were separated from relatives in neighboring Druze villages in Syria, and could only communicate by shouting across the border fence. There were cases in which brides crossed from Israel into Syria to fulfill arranged marriages. Some Druze in the Golan also declined Israeli citizenship, either out of attachment to their Syrian identity, or for fear of reprisals against Syrian relatives by the Assad regime.
But the war has tended to rally the Druze around Israel, especially after Iranian-backed Hezbollah began firing at Druze villages, most notoriously in a rocket attack in July 2024 that killed 12 children in the Druze village of Majdal Shams, near the Syrian border in the Golan Heights.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offers condolences to a Druze leader in Majdal Shams, Golan Heights, Israel, July 29, 2024 (Koby Gideon / GPO)
Many Druze in Syria now fear that the Syrian rebels, who include radical Islamists and elements of Al Qaeda and the so-called “Islamic State” or ISIS, could harm their communities.
Some local Druze communities are taking a rare opportunity of freedom to celebrate the country’s liberation from the Assad regime, which has been celebrated by Druze in Israel and Lebanon as well (especially since Assad’s father, Hafez al-Assad, was responsible for the assassination of Druze leader Kamal Jumblatt in 1977).
Others, however, including those that were loyal to the Assad regime, are asking that they be included in Israel rather than a Syria run by radical Islamists.
The Jerusalem Post explained:
“These villages were in fact an enclave surrounded by rebel groups, most of them Sunni Islamists,” added Dr. Yusri Khaizran, senior lecturer in the Department of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at Shalem College and a research fellow at the Harry S. Truman Institute for the Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University.
“For years Israel faced a conflict: on the one hand, it sought to create a certain mechanism of understandings with rebel organizations in the Golan Heights; while on the other hand, Israel’s commitment to the Druze community in Israel prompted it to create a balancing equation, signaling to the Islamists that they will not be allowed to invade the Hader enclave and carry out violent mass massacres against the Druze.”
…
Khaizran continued: “Strikingly, the Druze community in Israel is the smallest of the Druze communities in the Middle East, yet it has essentially become the shield of the Druze, a center of gravity that can provide assistance to the Druze in Syria.”
Since the Assad regime fell on Sunday, the IDF has moved into parts of southwestern Syria, including the former demilitarized zone between Israel and Syria, which includes several Druze villages. There are unconfirmed reports that the IDF is operating even outside that area.
That is the context in which the local Druze population is asking Israel to stay, and to annex their communities.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
