On a hilltop overlooking the Sea of Galilee in Kfar Hittim, a steady flow of Druze pilgrims queue to pray at the shrine to their most revered prophet, Shuaib. For the first time in more than 75 years, hundreds of Druze men have crossed from Syria to celebrate the four-day festival of Zariya at the holy site in northern Israel.
Anwar Abu Hamra (60) travelled from Sweida, the mountainous Druze-dominated province in southern Syria. It was “very meaningful to connect with the Druze from Syria”, said Fouad (22), who travelled with his family from Daliat el-Carmel, a Druze enclave near the Israeli city of Haifa.
A medieval offshoot of Shia Islam which believes in reincarnation, the Arabic-speaking Druze sect has about one million members scattered across Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, northern Israel and the Golan Heights, which lies in territory that Israel annexed from Syria in the 1980s in move largely unrecognised by the international community.
Abu Yazan, an official from the Druze village of Khader, which is in Syria territory seized by Israel after the fall of the Assad regime in December, said the trip to the neighbouring Jewish state – which remains at war with Syria – was “purely religious”.
[ Syria’s largely secular Druze community drawn into sectarian conflictOpens in new window ]
While no official statement was issued by the government in Damascus regarding the Druze pilgrimage to Israel, a video sent to The Irish Times by a local Syrian journalist shows Syrian security forces escorting a convoy of buses carrying Druze on the outskirts of Damascus on the main road to Sweida.
After the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, “the Druze community in what is now Israel became isolated from the centres of gravity of the Druze religion which are Syria and Lebanon”, says Tobias Lang, a political scientist who has researched the Druze.
Israel’s Druze minority represents 1.5 per cent of Israeli citizens and undertakes mandatory military service but also discourages interfaith marriage and protested against a 2018 law that defined Israel as the “nation state” of the Jewish people.
In Syria, a spate of revenge killings of Alawites, another offshoot of Shia Islam and minority viewed as aligned with the former Assad regime, sharpened the concerns of Druze leaders about the ability and willingness of the new government in Damascus, led by Ahmad al-Sharra, a former Sunni Islamist militia leader, to protect religious minorities in the Sunni-dominated country.
The semi-autonomous Druze community is concentrated along a strategic intersection in the Levant, with the governments in Syria and Israel viewing the minority as playing a role in their future security. Since the fall of the Assad regime, Israel’s military has struck hundreds of targets in southern Syria and seized Syrian territory near Sweida as part of an effort to create a so-called “security buffer” where it says it will not allow Syrian forces to be deployed.
Meanwhile, the Syrian government views battle-hardened Druze fighters as a bulwark in southern Syria against militant groups affiliated with the Islamic State terror group and the former Assad regime, as well as arms and drug smugglers. Druze leaders and Damascus reportedly reached a tentative agreement in March for Druze militias to join the Syrian state forces, but these armed groups so far remain largely outside the official state apparatus and in military control of Sweida.
The risk for the Druze in Syria at the moment is that they are “counted on the Israeli side” and “stamped as traitors”, says Lang. The Druze are walking a “tightrope” by “keeping distance from the new regime in Damascus but not getting too close to Israel – it’s a precarious situation.” But for Druze living in the Golan Heights – where they are eligible for Israeli citizenship but mostly identify as Syrian – the Druze pilgrimage from Syria to Kfar Hittim provided a chance to meet loved ones divided for decades by the hard border between Israel and Syria.
As Syrian Druze gathered their bags and boarded buses returning home on Saturday afternoon, Hanan al-Deen cried as she bid farewell to her family and old neighbours from her hometown of Achrafieh, Sahnaya south of Damascus. Al-Deen moved to Majdal Shams, a Druze town in the Golan Heights, when she married her husband nearly three decades ago – “I haven’t seen my family in 27 years.”
Days later, deadly violence between Islamist government forces and Druze fighters erupted around Achrafieh Sahnaya and the Damascus suburb of Jaramana, after an audio clip was circulated online purporting to show a Druze cleric insulting the Prophet Muhammad. The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 101 people – mostly Druze – were killed, with an Israeli drone strike in Syria launched on the pretext of defending Druze from extremists killing one member of Syria’s forces.
In a statement, Syria’s foreign ministry said the government “affirms its unwavering commitment to protect all components of the Syrian people ... including the children of the honourable Druze community,” while also rejecting “foreign interference”.
Israeli figures have voiced support for separatism among Syrian Druze and there has long been public debate in Israel about an Israeli-sponsored Druze statelet formed from territory in southern Syria − a proposal largely lacking Druze support.
Julia Hazima, an Israeli Druze teacher who travelled from Abu Snan to the Shuyab Shrine for Ziraya, says Sweida city is seen as the capital of the Druze nation and that Israel could protect a federal Druze state that would have close “security co-operation” with Israel to “ensure the borders are safe”.
