The religious minority at the heart of Israel’s standoff with Syria
The Druze live in pockets across the Middle East, and Israeli members of the community want Netanyahu to do more to help their kin in Syria.
For generations, the Druze minority has lived in the lands straddling the borders of Israel, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan practising its own monotheistic faith and customs. Numbering around a million today, they have traditionally supported whoever holds power in the areas they live, though the volatile geopolitics of the Middle East have complicated this policy.
Now, Druze leaders in Israel are pushing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to do more to defend their relatives across the border in Syria, where they face a deepening wave of sectarian violence — and that prospect is putting the Trump administration on edge.
Already there are signs of Israel being pulled into a broader conflict just as the US is trying to tamp down tensions in Syria. The Israeli air force struck Syria’s military headquarters as well as a site near the presidential palace in Damascus last week, saying it was trying to stop attacks against Druze concentrated in the country’s south. Israel also carried out a wave of air strikes on Syrian government tanks and military convoys approaching Druze-populated areas.
The White House responded by condemning the strikes, warning that they could complicate efforts to ease a surge of infighting in Syria after conservative Sunni Muslim forces toppled the Assad regime. The Druze in Israel and many in Syria accuse Syria’s new government, whose roots can be traced back to al Qaeda, of supporting sectarian violence against non-Sunni minorities. The government said it sent its troops to quell rather than fuel conflict between Druze and Sunni Muslim Bedouins living in the same area.
Israel’s political leaders say the strikes were needed because the country has a security interest in preventing Syria’s new government from gaining a military foothold near its border, and a moral obligation to protect the Syrian Druze.
But Israeli Druze, who say their families across the border are enduring atrocities at the hands of government-backed forces, including sectarian abuse and summary executions — even of women and children — argue that Israel isn’t going far enough.
Its armed forces, they say, didn’t intervene until hundreds of Druze had already been killed. Israeli Druze also make the case that after decades of loyalty to Israel, including sending their sons in large numbers to the military, they have earned the same type of cross-border protection Israel would theoretically provide to Jewish communities under threat.
“In the moment of truth, when the state of Israel needed to help the Druze, it got weak-kneed” said Fares Lalawi, 29, who is acting mayor of Isfiya, a largely Druze town in northern Israel.
While the fighting in Syria has ceased for now, the underlying tensions between Syria’s Druze and the country’s new rulers haven’t been resolved. Israel may again have to decide how far to go to defend the community.
Some Israeli Druze are taking matters into their own hands.
Lalawi, the mayor, was one of hundreds of young Druze who streamed across Israel’s border with Syria last week in a bid to persuade Israeli leaders to do more. He said he and many Israeli Druze were prepared to fight in Syria themselves if Israel’s military can’t stem attacks on their kin. Now he says the Syrian Druze are facing “a full-scale humanitarian disaster” without reliable access to food, electricity or water.
At the heart of the debate lie questions about Israel’s obligations to its non-Jewish citizens. Druze make up around 150,000 of the country’s 10 million population and have a unique relationship with the state of Israel. Since Israel’s founding, they were the only sizeable Arabic-speaking minority that allied itself with the state. A higher proportion of Druze men serve in Israeli combat units than those from the Jewish majority, and they have risen to some of the most senior positions in the Israeli security establishment.
“In light of their contribution to the state of Israel, they think Israel should keep its obligations toward them,” said Yusri Hazran of Jerusalem’s Hebrew University, who is Druze and researches minorities in the Middle East.
Hazran said Israeli Druze rushed to help victims of Hamas’s incursion on October 7, 2023, in which dozens of Israeli communities came under attack and hundreds of civilians were killed. Some of the most senior Israeli officers killed during the subsequent war in Gaza have been Druze, he added.
Still, the special relationship between the Druze and Israel, sometimes called the “blood bond,” has begun to erode in recent years due to the passing of laws that have alienated and frustrated the minority community.
This includes the 2018 Nation-State Law, which says that only Jewish people have the right to self-determination in Israel and that Israel is dedicated to the settlement of Jewish people. The year before, Israel passed the Kaminitz Law, aimed at cracking down on illegal building, which the Druze say unfairly targets them with fines and demolitions. Both were passed under Netanyahu.
Now, some in the Druze community say their relationship with Israel is at risk of breaking down entirely if the country can’t figure out a policy to protect the Druze in Syria.
If the situation of the Druze in Syria doesn’t improve, “this will seriously impact the relationship we have here,” said Amal Asad, a retired brigadier general in Israel’s military.
Rather than striking targets in Damascus, which would deepen the perception that Syrian Druze are allied with Israel, the Israeli military should have quietly helped arm them after the fall of the Assad regime so they could better defend themselves, Asad said.
The US’s ambitions are preventing Israel from doing more, said Hasson Hasson, a reserve brigadier general and former military secretary to two Israeli presidents who said he is involved in talks with the Israeli government about its policy toward Syria.
Like many Israeli Druze, Hasson said he was angered by the speed with which the Trump administration moved to normalise relations with Syria’s new leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa. Until recently the US had a $10 million bounty on his head for leading a terrorist organisation, but American officials say they now are hoping to stabilise Syria after years of civil war.
Israeli Druze say the West has been hoodwinked by Sharaa, who since taking over as Syria’s leader has donned a suit and espoused a moderate message. Some in Israel have proposed an autonomous zone for Syrian Druze in southern Syria, or a non-aggression pact between Israel and Syria that would allow Israel to intervene if it felt necessary. Both Israeli and US officials have said there were talks to improve Israel-Syria relations before the fighting broke out last week.
Lalawi, the mayor, said that it shouldn’t just be Israel defending the Druze, but a US-led coalition like the one that fought against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.
He said he could even support Israeli occupation of southern Syria under some circumstances to protect Syria’s Druze, though he worries it would spark backlash by Sunni Muslims worldwide.
“The territorial integrity of Syria is important, and the Druze there are an inseparable part of the Syrian people,” he said.
Wall Street Journal
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