Druze wait close to the border fence within the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights village of Majdal Shams, as Syrian Druze who’d crossed over the day earlier than return to Syria following days of sectarian bloodshed within the southern Syrian area of Sweida, July 17.
JALAA MAREY/AFP through Getty Photographs
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JALAA MAREY/AFP through Getty Photographs
MAJDAL SHAMS, Golan Heights — For his total life, Jalaa Ayoub might see Syria, only a few dozen yards away from the japanese fringe of his city within the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. However he couldn’t go there.
Then, in July, as lethal preventing broke out between totally different non secular factions, he determined, with no hesitation, to stroll throughout the border into southern Syria to assist shield family who stay there.
“Now we have whole allegiance to Syria,” Ayoub, 37, says. “To me it’s my motherland, and due to this fact I needed to go there.”
Ayoub is a part of the bulk Druze group within the city of Majdal Shams. About 1 million sturdy, the Druze cut up off from Shia Islam centuries in the past and stay scattered throughout Israel, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria and within the Golan Heights. That is the place Ayoub lives, on land which as soon as belonged to Syria however was annexed by Israel in a 1967 struggle.
Regardless of greater than 5 a long time underneath Israeli management, the Druze within the Golan stay fiercely related to their Syrian identities. Most have refused Israeli citizenship, as an alternative selecting to connect themselves to the destiny of neighboring Syria.
However their loyalties to Syria have been examined by sectarian preventing over the past weeks within the Sweida area, in southern Syria. Greater than 1,000 folks, many civilians, have been killed in clashes between some Sunni Bedouin tribes, Syrian authorities forces and factions of the Druze.
The lethal violence has challenged the cohesion of Syria’s fragile interim authorities. It has uncovered long-running rifts that Syria’s new leaders have struggled to include since taking energy final December.
Amid accounts of atrocities and executions carried out by all factions, the Druze within the Golan Heights say they really feel disillusioned, even betrayed by Syria’s interim authorities, headed by Ahmed al-Sharaa, a former militant affiliated with al-Qaida.
“This regime got here to dissect folks, to divide folks and to create sectarianism amongst folks,” says Ayyoub, mustachioed and sporting the standard dishevelled trousers of Druze males. “The regime confirmed us what their beliefs are, and we’re towards these beliefs.”
As violence escalated, the borders opened
Earlier than a tentative authorities ceasefire in late July, Druze civilians in Syria making an attempt to flee the massacre in Sweida started heading in direction of Majdal Shams, within the Golan Heights.
Haniye Abuzaid, a Majdal Shams resident, mentioned she was sitting at house watching tv one July morning when her daughter known as with unbelievable information: her niece and her niece’s daughter had crossed from Syria into the Golan Heights.
“I used to be so completely satisfied to see her,” Abuzaid mentioned of her niece. “I had not seen her in 40 years.”
Her family had merely walked throughout the border. Israeli border guards have been permitting folks to cross by way of an space referred to as “Shouting Hill,” so named as a result of members of the family standing on reverse sides are shut sufficient to see and listen to one another.
Sayyid Ahmad, 62, a baker in Majdal Shams, mentioned his 4 sons additionally headed into Syria to see household through the worst of the preventing. It was a visit, he mentioned, that solidified his household’s ties to Syria. “We needed to provide assist. We introduced meals. We introduced monetary assist,” he recounts.
However his love for Syria doesn’t lengthen to the nation’s interim chief, Ahmed al-Sharaa, whose militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham overthrew the Assad regime final December.
“Golani is a terrorist,” Ahmad shouts, referring to Sharaa by his nom de guerre.
Since coming to energy, Sharaa has struggled to persuade numerous armed factions throughout Syria to put down their weapons and to hitch a brand new, nationwide military underneath central authorities management.
Ethnic and non secular minority teams stay distrustful of Sharaa, and the majority-Druze group in Sweida had been one of many main holdouts in demilitarizing, together with Kurdish militias in Syria’s northeast who’re in negotiations over methods to merge with the nationwide army.
“Sharaa got here to Sweida, and he needed instantly to disarm the folks, and he needed to impose his guidelines onto the folks,” says Kifah Shaar, a resident of Majdal Shams. “And it developed into killings.”
When Sharaa ordered authorities troops to deploy to Sweida, ostensibly to tamp down experiences of ongoing kidnapping between Bedouin tribes and Druze militias, some Druze fighters accused Syrian authorities troops of siding with the Bedouins.
“That military of Sharaa’s shouldn’t be a good Syrian military that can maintain us,” says Ahlam Garairreh, 45, a Druze prepare dinner in Majdal Shams who was born and raised in Sweida. She says six of her family have been killed within the preventing this July.
Throughout the civil struggle towards the ousted Assad regime, she says her household in Sweida helped rebels and refugees of all backgrounds.
“They ate our meals, and so they slept on our mattresses,” Garairreh says, shaking with anger, referring to Sunni Bedouin tribesmen. “Now they’re slaughtering us.”
“Make us really feel protected”
Shaar, 34, makes the morning’s falafel in Majdal Shams whereas pondering the day’s recent horrors from Sweida: she’s been listening to experiences of fellow Druze executed, or buried in mass graves in southern Syria, earlier than a tentative ceasefire was reached in late July.
The Syrian authorities additionally evacuated round 1,500 Bedouin civilians displaced or endangered by Druze militiamen.
Close by, Shaar’s husband Mu’thad, a restaurant supervisor, shakes his head as he mixes a big, quivering batch of floor chickpeas.
“Sharaa must make the Druze really feel protected. He wants to determine safety and stability. He must do it in a mild approach,” he says. “Sharaa must make the Druze really feel that they’re necessary members of the society.”
Their fears — that minority teams just like the Druze will probably be focused by Sunni Muslim factions in Syria — have been amplified this previous March, as Syrian authorities forces have been implicated within the massacres of greater than 1,400 folks, principally of the Alawite ethnic minority, alongside Syria’s Mediterranean coast. A report by Syria’s interim authorities this month discovered no proof that Syrian army management ordered the killings.
Additional inflaming non secular divides in Syria has been intervention by Israel within the battle. Since final December, it has been putting targets in Syria, together with in Sweida — so as, Israel says, to guard the Druze.
“Our pursuits in Syria are identified, restricted and clear: initially, to take care of the established order within the southern Syria area, and to forestall threats towards Israel. The second factor is to forestall hurt to the Druze group,” Israel’s overseas minister Gideon Saar mentioned in July.
In Majdal Shams, some within the Druze group welcomed Israel’s strikes, which additionally hit Syria’s protection ministry within the capital Damascus.
“Now we have members of the Druze group within the Israeli military, and I don’t care if they’re from Majdal Shams or not. They’re Druze, so I struggle with them, and so they struggle for me,” says Majdal Shams resident Jameel Braiq.
Others right here warn the notion of being favored by Israel will make the Druze greater targets in Syria — and threat inflaming sectarian divides additional.
“I believe that is the poison that’s being put within the discourse and making an attempt to gas all of the hatred amongst Syrians,” says Wael Tarbieh, a pro-Syrian analyst with the Majdal Shams-based human rights group, Al Marsad.
Sharaa, Syria’s interim chief, has tried to quell sectarian tensions by promising accountability.
“We should acknowledge that any try to fragment the unity of the Syrian folks or to exclude any of its parts is a direct menace to Syria’s stability,” he mentioned in a speech shortly after agreeing to a ceasefire in Sweida. “The Syrian state is dedicated to defending all minorities and sects within the nation and can proceed with holding all violators accountable, no matter who they’re.”
However the preventing in Sweida has solely widened sectarian rifts and emphasised factional identities as soon as once more.
“I was secular earlier than. However I am not secular anymore after what I’ve seen in Sweida,” says Ahmad, the baker.
He says with tears in his eyes that after seeing his fellow Druze killed in Syria, he has determined to apply the Druze faith and has began praying once more.
Nuha Musleh contributed reporting from the Golan Heights.
