Majdal Shams massacre highlights Solomonic predicament of Golan’s Druze community
Torn between historic allegiance to Syria and increasing acceptance of Israeli rule, community finds itself unwillingly caught up in bloody conflict after Hezbollah attack
Gianluca Pacchiani is the Arab affairs reporter for The Times of Israel
Saturday’s tragic rocket attack on Majdal Shams, which claimed the lives of 12 children and teens at a soccer match, underscored the fragile security situation in the Golan Heights while highlighting the intricate dynamics of the Druze community in the border region that Israel captured from Syria in 1967.
The deadly attack was attributed by the IDF and US intelligence to Hezbollah, which denied responsibility. It was the single deadliest attack since the Iran-backed terror group began striking northern Israel on October 8.
The Druze population of the plateau is characterized by a complex political status within Israeli society: The region, captured by Israel from Syria during the Six Day War, was formally annexed in 1981. The Israeli move, however, has not obtained international recognition except for that of the US under president Donald Trump in 2019.
Located in the southern foothills of Mount Hermon with a population of nearly 12,000, Majdal Shams is the largest of four Druze settlements in the plateau. Together with the other three towns — Ein Qiniyye, Mas’ade, and Buq’ata — the overall Druze population in the Golan stands today at 20,000, living alongside about 50,000 Jewish Israelis.
The Druze of the Golan zealously maintained their Syrian identity after 1967 and have resisted and refused offers of Israeli citizenship.
Elsewhere in Israel, the Druze, an ethno-religious group known for its secretive and insular nature, accepted Israeli sovereignty after the state’s founding in 1948 and generally identify as Israelis. Men from these Druze communities serve in the IDF.
Most Druze of the Golan have opted for permanent residency, out of concern that their acceptance of Israeli sovereignty might endanger their family members across the border in Syria. There is also some fear the community could be accused of treason by Damascus authorities should the region be returned to Syria, according to Col. (Ret.) Sarit Zehavi, founder of the Alma Center, an Israeli research institute focused on the security challenges in the north.
After 1967, the Syrian regime actively encouraged the preservation of tight links with the Golan Druze, supporting commercial ties, for instance with the cross-border sale of produce, and allowing Druze residents of the Golan to study for free in Syrian academic institutions.
There have been family reunifications between Druze on either side of the border as well as marriages linking families that are today in two separate warring countries, as portrayed in the acclaimed 2004 Israeli movie “The Syrian Bride,” set mostly in Majdal Shams.
However, with the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in 2011, things began to change.
Pragmatic Israeli citizenship
While the Golan Druze held repeated rallies to publicly display their loyalty to Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, and in 2015 even attacked ambulances carrying wounded Syrians into Israel for treatment, believing them to be opposition fighters, many began to feel that ties with Damascus were fraying, or even that the regime had sold them out.
Consequently, increasing numbers of residents began to apply for Israeli passports, including many young people for whom Syria was an abstract place they heard about in family stories.
In 2022, the Israeli nonprofit news organization Shomrim obtained official government figures showing an uptick in citizenship requests filed by Druze residents of the Golan over the past years, a trend that experts attributed to pragmatic reasons, rather than identification with the state.
In 2021, the number of applications stood at 239, compared to 75 in 2017 and merely four in 2010. Interior Ministry figures in 2022 showed that 4,300 members of the community held Israeli citizenship, about 20% of the total.
Druze residents of the Golan today enjoy the benefits of Israeli residency, such as access to healthcare, education, and other social services, and freedom of movement inside Israel. At the same time, they also face significant challenges, such as difficulties in receiving building permits, maintaining ties with their families across the border, and traveling abroad for those who do not have Israeli passports.
A wind turbine project in the Golan triggered massive demonstrations by local Druze residents last summer, who saw the project as a threat to their agrarian way of life, an encroachment on ancestral lands to which they feel an almost sacred bond, and solidification of what they view as Israel’s occupation of the territory.
The project, the latest episode in the history of tense relations between the Jewish state and the recalcitrant minority, was eventually mothballed following repeated clashes with the police and outcry from community leaders.
Fraying ties with Assad regime
Allegiance to Damascus is also increasingly under question. While Bashar Assad was once perceived as the protector of the current and former Druze citizens in Syria and the Golan, both communities have been losing patience with the Iran-backed regime.
Claims that the Assad regime has sold out the Golan Druze resurfaced in the immediate aftermath of Saturday’s bloody rocket attack on Majdal Shams.
At a small rally held in the Syrian Druze town of Al Sweida on Sunday – a hotbed of opposition to the regime in recent months – residents held placards blaming the regime for “selling” the Golan, and Hezbollah for “killing children.”
שלט שהונף היום בא-סווידאא' הר הדרוזים בדרום סוריה שאנשיו מוחים בחודשים האחרונים נגד משטר אסד: "המשטר מכר את הגולן וחיזבאללה הורג את ילדיו" pic.twitter.com/SjcZdSOdx1
— roi kais • روعي كايس • רועי קייס (@kaisos1987) July 28, 2024
The Druze of Al Sweida have staged regular demonstrations against the regime since last August, sparked by the rising inflation and the removal of government subsidies.
As their grievances have gone beyond economic concerns, protesters have been demanding the toppling of the Assad regime and Iran’s withdrawal from the country.
