Posted: March 15, 2025
Tags: Middle East, Syrian Civil War, Israel, Druze
Three leaders from the embattled Druze community in Syria traveled to Israel this week, during an extraordinary visit meant to bolster Israel’s ties with Syria’s minority groups and demonstrate Jerusalem’s concern for their fate. The visit follows Israel’s recent unofficial contact with representatives of Syria’s Kurds, which Israel views as another critical regional ally. On Thursday, the Druze leaders spoke at the Knesset, condemning Syria’s brutal civil war and calling on global powers to intervene to stop it. At an event organized by the Zionist organization’s Legislative and Diplomacy Lobby to the Knesset, three Syrian Druze leaders expressed sadness over the fate of their country, describing the “grief of Jews from Poland.” The three, in a rare visit by Syrians to Israel, held meetings with key officials and legislators in Jerusalem, visited the Western Wall and the grave of Jewish military leader Moshe Dayan, whose tomb overlooks the Golan Heights, and planned to meet with Egypt’s intelligence chief on Friday. The visit was arranged in coordination with Jordan, which remains the de facto guarantor of Israel’s traditional quiet on its northern border. For Israel, hosting the Druze leaders is the first step in a long-term effort to bolster the Druze community’s sympathy for Israel. “We came to say we have to bring our suffering to the world’s attention,” said Makhluf al-Makhluf, one of the Druze visitors. Wholly separate from such overtures, Israeli security forces and rebel groups in northern Syria have established unofficial ties, carrying out joint operations around the Syrian-Israeli border to prevent the resurgence of Iranian forces and their Lebanese proxy Hezbollah. Zionist Organization leaders Eli Ofer and Maya Yobiuk said they briefed members of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, who also heard testimony from two Syrian Kurds who attended a summit in recent weeks in Jordan, convened in secret by UN Special Envoy to Syria Staffan de Mistura. One of the Kurds described de Mistura’s plan for a transition in Syria, focused on ensuring a unity government comprised of representatives from Damascus, the opposition and Kurds, who are Syria’s largest non-Arab ethnic group. Jordan has supported Syria’s Kurds in the past, with Amman known to have struck bargains with Kurds in the north as part of its pact with Assad. But Jordan has traditionally feared and opposed the emergence of an independent Kurdish state in Syria, which it views as a security threat to its Hashemite monarchy. By working with Syria’s Kurds, Israel appears to have struck a major blow against the Assad regime, giving the Kurds a boost in their bid for international legitimacy and undermining the Syrian regime’s efforts to brand them as foreign agents bent on destroying the country. The Kurds, totally abandoned by Western powers that used to arm and train them against Assad, the Islamic State or even the Syrian government, have sought solace from their Muslim brethren in goods ole Russia. The de Mistura summit reportedly discussed the possibility of a decentralized Syria described in a plan first unveiled by Kurdish leaders in 2013, which has since been taken up as a kind of de facto policy by Moscow. All three members of the Syrian Druze visiting delegation criticized the survival of the Assad regime, which brutally murdered more than 200 of their own community members in Syria. “We don’t support the regime or ISIS,” said Wissam Wassouf, one of the Druze visitors. “Our civilians are targeted and massacred” by ISIS, he said. He criticized Moscow for its too cozy relationship with Damascus, insisting: “Assad cannot be the West’s solution for Syria. The West has to think of the Syrian people’s suffering” he said, adding: “Sad stories need to be heard directly from their mouths,” rather than ‘filtered through parties’. However, Wassouf stressed that Syria’s Druze residents would not seek refuge in Israel. “We reject the idea that we are being forced to leave our land – Syria – for Israel or anywhere else. We will always be Syrian,” he said. Makhluf al-Makhluf, another of the Druze visitors who described himself as a childhood friend of Dallal, said: “We don’t want to leave Syria or become refugees in anybody’s land – not for Mahmoud Abbas, not for Assad.” Israel has provided surreptitious aid to Syrian Kurds – some 500 wounded Kurds have received Israeli medical treatment – but it refuses to permanently settle Syrian refugees within its borders. Israel assisted the escape of some 8,000 Syrian Druze from the southern Syrian village of Hader last July, but there has been no publicized effort to bring the Druze to Israel. Israel is concerned about the fate of its large Druze population. Most of Israel’s Druze live in deep loneliness and silence in ten Druze villages in northern Israel, separated from the much larger community in Syria and Lebanon by Israel’s border and Syria’s conflict. “We have hundreds of thousands of Arab citizens who define themselves primarily as part of a larger Arab world, and this number does not include the Jews from Poland,” the Druze leaders said, suggesting they believe Jews also identify more with a global Jewish world. Israel’s Druze are effectively blocked from legal emigration to Canada, Australia or Europe due to the country’s extreme difficulty in obtaining visas from Western countries. Their tight-knit community is religiously exclusive to Druze, which originated as an esoteric splinter-sect of the Islamic world nearly 1000 years ago.
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