The Syrian Observatory For Human Rights

Israel’s Druse Minority Shows Unity With Its Syrian Kin

Minority presses prime minister to intervene as brethren in Syria clash with Islamists

 

HURFEISH, Israel—The men of this Druse village in the Galilee mountains proudly don shirts from their days in elite Israeli combat units. But now they fear the same military is helping Islamist rebels in neighboring Syria who fight the pro-regime Druse minority.

Druse straddle both sides of the contentious border and many of them in Israel accuse the military of quietly allying with Islamist rebels to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad while many Syrian Druse are fighting for the Assad regime.

Israel says it isn’t taking sides and doesn’t want to be drawn into the war raging for more than four years across its northern border. But Israelis treat wounded Syrians who arrive at the border on a humanitarian basis regardless of whether they are combatants. The Israeli army said it has treated about 1,600 Syrians over the past two years.

Israeli ambulances transporting the wounded from Syria through their villages to hospitals has so outraged the Druse that mobs attacked two of the ambulances on Monday. In one of the attacks, the angry crowd dragged two wounded Syrians from an ambulance and beat one to death.

“If someone is killing my brother, don’t help him do it!” pleaded one Hurfeish resident who said he serves in the Israeli police.

The Druse are an Arab religious minority concentrated in Lebanon, Syria and northern Israel. They follow a monotheistic faith that branched out from Islam and incorporated other beliefs. Druse recognize all major prophets including Moses, Jesus and Muhammad but have their own rites and scripture.

Druse in Israel serve in the highest ranks of the military. But they also maintain their kinship with coreligionists across the border in Syria.

Now, after decades of keeping political and communal allegiances separate, the Druse in Israel are using their loyalty to the country to pressure Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to intervene on behalf of their brethren in Syria.

The agitation escalated after Nusra Front, the al Qaeda-linked rebel group in Syria, killedabout two dozen Druse in the northern province of Idlib earlier this month.

The Druse have been holding solidarity marches and gathering contributions to send to relatives in Syria.

On Monday, the anxiety turned into outright hostility when a gang of Druse near Hurfeish attacked a military ambulance believed to be tending to Syrian war casualties. Hours later, a mob near the Druse village of Majdal Shams in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights ambushed the ambulance with two wounded Syrians and killed one of them.

Mr. Netanyahu met Druse leaders on Wednesday with the aim of soothing tensions in the wake of the ambulance attacks and he paid tribute to the contribution of Israeli Druse to national security. He added, however, that Israel wouldn’t tolerate attacks on the army or vigilantism, and reminded them that the country’s policy is to stay out of the Syrian war.

“We have succeeded keeping Israel outside the anarchy that is taking place in Syria….That was and will remain our policy,” he said. “That said…I value the [Druse] community.”

Druse leaders in Israel say they expect their country to honor their “blood alliance” and to prevent large-scale killing of their kin in Syria. At the same time, some Druse also question whether their brethren in Syria would want to be seen as on the receiving end of Israeli help.

Last week, Mr. Netanyahu and Israel’s army chief signaled they wouldn’t allow a massacre of Syrian Druse. But any large-scale intervention seems unlikely given Israel’s insistence that it wants to stay out of the war.

For decades, the 130,000 Druse citizens of Israel have straddled divided allegiances. Those in Israel have remained loyal to the state. But in Syria and the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Middle East war, Druse have remained loyal to Mr. Assad. Nevertheless, Druse on both sides maintain close communal links through religious leaders, cellphones and Facebook.

Reserve Col. Mufid Marie, sitting in a Hurfeish parlor adorned by a wall-size portrait of a brother who was an Israeli paratrooper killed in action, denounced the attacks on ambulances as the work of local “street rabble.” That said, his fellow Druse in Syria are surrounded by rebel groups and fear mass killings motivated by religious extremism, he added.

“The Druse want to prevent a Holocaust from happening to the Druse people in Syria. There is a real threat,” said Mr. Marie. “Four hundred of our soldiers have died for Israel…. We are talking with the government to ensure that, if there is a massacre, the Jewish nation won’t stand by with its arms folded.”

The Druse aren’t the only minority group threatened by Islamists in Syria. Islamic State militants have routinely targeted ethnic and religious minorities such as Christians and Kurds since capturing swaths of the country last year, overrunning towns and kidnapping women and children.

And in neighboring Iraq, the militant group singled out members of the minority Yazidi sect, killing those who refused to convert to Islam and taking girls and women as war brides and sex slaves.

Mufid Marie, an Israeli reserve colonel, stands alongside a painting of his brother, who was killed in the Gaza Strip in the 1990s.
Mufid Marie, an Israeli reserve colonel, stands alongside a painting of his brother, who was killed in the Gaza Strip in the 1990s. PHOTO: JOSHUA MITNICK/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

About an hour away from Hurfeish, through winding roads descending from the northern region of Galilee and then rising to the Golan Heights, the Druse village of Majdal Shams flies the same five-color Druse flags as the Galilee village.

A little more than two miles to the east over the Syrian border is the Druse village of Hader. It is surrounded by Islamist rebels from Nusra Front—the group that killed theDruse in Idlib province earlier this month. Dull explosions from the fighting nearby can be heard in Majdal Shams. Residents here say the years of chaos have eroded loyalties to Mr. Assad and strengthened Druse communal pride.

“The war is all around,” Salman Fakhir Aldin, who directs a human-rights organization in Majdal Shams. “People are divided and anxious about the future and about relatives in Syria.”

Back in Hurfeish, Druse say they are eager to continue their alliance with the state, which dates back to before Israel’s independence. But if the Druse in Syria become imperiled, they warn that relationship will be put to the test.

“We expect that the state of Israel won’t allow the injury of any minority group on the basis of religion,” said Ziyad Dabour, a Druse businessman and former army officer. “Would you allow someone to kill your coreligionist and sit by quietly?”

 

 

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL