What’s next for the Druze in Syria? This is the focus of the talks in Majdal Shams in the Israeli-occupied Golan. The violence against fellow believers in Suweida, Syria, is causing fear and anger.
In the south-west Syrian province of Suweida, there has been fierce violence between Bedouins, who are supported by Syrian government troops, and Druze since mid-July. In Majdal Shams, the largest of four Druze villages in the Israeli-occupied Golan, people are shocked. Comparisons are being made with the Hamas massacres of 7 October and even the Shoah for what is happening to members of the faith on the other side of the border. According to the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, more than 1,300 people have been killed in Suweida, two thirds of them Druze. 120,000 are on the run.
Majdal Shams also made the headlines. Hundreds of people from the small town of 11,000 broke through the border fence in search of relatives on the other side, some of whom they had not seen for decades. The Israeli army, initially surprised, let them go. It even accompanied groups for visits lasting several hours, says a young man.
From the Syrian side, on the other hand, Druze came to Majdal Shams. “A friend I went to school with in Quneitra called me and said, I’m here, come, I’m hungry,” reports Saker Abusaleh, owner of a small stationery shop in Majdal Shams. They hadn’t seen each other since 1967. “These are indescribable feelings!”
Family ties across the border
Not only from Suweida, but also from Jaramana near Damascus, 60 kilometres away, many families reportedly made their way to the border; some fleeing the violence, others hoping to see family on the other side. The fence has long since been closed again. Around 35 families are now stuck on the Syrian side, says a resident in Majdal Shams. The road back is closed. Someone has sprayed “Free Suweida” and “We are all Suweida” on the concrete blocks in front of the border fence.
Majdal Shams is the north-easternmost outpost for Israel. For the rest of the world, with the exception of the USA, it is Syrian territory occupied by Israel. The majority of the approximately 25,000 Golan Druze have also retained their Syrian citizenship. Unlike their 122,000 fellow believers with Israeli passports in the northern Israeli Galilee and the Carmel Mountains, they do not serve in the Israeli army.
Increasing desire for integration
In recent years, however, the Druze community in the Golan and their relationship with Israel has changed. Nadih Halabi from a small human rights organisation in Majdal Shams points out that young people from his village can no longer go to Damascus to study since the civil war broke out in Syria. As a result, there was no experience that the students brought with them and which, according to Halabi, transformed Majdal Shams into a cosmopolitan, relatively liberal oasis. Today, they want to “integrate themselves more and more into the Israeli system”, not necessarily by serving in the army, but through Israeli citizenship, for example.
The violence in Suweida seems to have accelerated this process. “If you had asked me ten days ago who I was, I would have answered: Syrian,” says Nadih Halabi. Now there is nothing left of the Syria that he and others believed in and identified with, says the 54-year-old Druze activist. Years ago, he lost 14 family members when “Islamic State” terrorists attacked Suweida.
And now relatives have been killed again. “I don’t know the exact number,” says Halabi, adding that “the extent of the catastrophe cannot yet be estimated”. Whether Syria can ever be a state for all its minorities again depends on the Sunni majority. If they do not support a regime change, Syria will “become a second Afghanistan”.
Controversial Israeli military operations
Horror and anger at the violence in Suweida are palpable on the southern foothills of Mount Hermon. Videos and images of appalling brutality are doing the rounds. The Druze are a peace-loving people who do not harm anyone – unless they are forced to defend themselves, they say. There is also great support for Israel’s commitment to Suweida’s Druze. Only the question of military strikes divides opinion.
In a café, a young man argues in favour of humanitarian aid and money, but against Israel’s armed involvement in Syria. Another, however, believes: “Without the Israeli army, there would have been no more Druze long ago.” And while stationer Abusaleh is firmly convinced that none of his fellow believers in Suweida, Syria, would leave their homes even if Israel opened the border, activist Nabih Halabi disagrees: “If Israel let them, thousands of Druze would come from Syria.
Wake-up call for military service
Since the escalation of violence in Suweida, hardly anyone in Majdal Shams feels Syrian. What’s more, what is happening in Syria is a wake-up call, says Amir Alwali, who distributes Druze flags to passers-by with a local scout group in the neighbouring village of Buqata. “The message to us, to the new generation, is that everyone should serve in the army in Israel in order to protect themselves.”
For him, Alwali, the Israeli military intervention in the neighbouring country does not go far enough. Israel must disarm the area at least 40 to 50 kilometres deep, “go in like it did in the Gaza Strip”. Otherwise, Alwali believes, the next target of violence could be Tel Aviv: “There are a million terrorists on our border just waiting for the opportunity.”
