Within the Golan Heights, Druze are loyal to Syria. However that loyalty is now severely examined

MAJDAL SHAMS, Golan Heights — For his whole life, Jalaa Ayoub may see Syria, only a few dozen yards away from the jap 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 completely different non secular factions, he determined, with no hesitation, to stroll throughout the border into southern Syria to assist shield family who reside there.

“We have total allegiance to Syria,” Ayoub, 37, says. “To me it is my motherland, and therefore I wanted to go there.”

Ayoub is a part of the bulk Druze neighborhood within the city of Majdal Shams. About 1 million robust, the Druze break up off from Shia Islam centuries in the past and reside 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 warfare.

Regardless of greater than 5 many years beneath Israeli management, the Druze within the Golan stay fiercely related to their Syrian identities. Most have refused Israeli citizenship, as a substitute selecting to connect themselves to the destiny of neighboring Syria.

However their loyalties to Syria have been examined by sectarian preventing during the last weeks within the Sweida area, in southern Syria. Greater than 1,000 individuals, 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 comprise 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 came to dissect people, to divide people and to create sectarianism among people,” says Ayyoub, mustachioed and carrying the normal dishevelled trousers of Druze males. “The regime showed us what their beliefs are, and we are against those 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 residence 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 was so happy 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 individuals to cross by an space often called “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 in the course of the worst of the preventing. It was a visit, he mentioned, that solidified his household’s ties to Syria. “We had to offer help. We brought food. We brought financial help,” he recounts.

However his love for Syria doesn’t prolong 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 affix a brand new, nationwide military beneath central authorities management.

Ethnic and non secular minority teams stay distrustful of Sharaa, and the majority-Druze neighborhood in Sweida had been one of many main holdouts in demilitarizing, together with Kurdish militias in Syria’s northeast who’re in negotiations over the best way to merge with the nationwide navy.

“Sharaa came to Sweida, and he wanted immediately to disarm the people, and he wanted to impose his rules onto the people,” 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 army of Sharaa’s is not a decent Syrian army that will take care of us,” says Ahlam Garairreh, 45, a Druze cook 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.

Through the civil warfare towards the ousted Assad regime, she says her household in Sweida helped rebels and refugees of all backgrounds.

“They ate our food, and they slept on our mattresses,” Garairreh says, shaking with anger, referring to Sunni Bedouin tribesmen. “Now they are slaughtering us.”

“Make us feel safe”

Shaar, 34, makes the morning’s falafel in Majdal Shams whereas pondering the day’s contemporary 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 needs to make the Druze feel safe. He needs to establish security and stability. He needs to do it in a gentle way,” he says. “Sharaa needs to make the Druze feel that they are important members of the society.”

Their fears — that minority teams just like the Druze can 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 individuals, largely of the Alawite ethnic minority, alongside Syria’s Mediterranean coast. A report by Syria’s interim authorities this month discovered no proof that Syrian navy 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 placing targets in Syria, together with in Sweida — so as, Israel says, to guard the Druze.

“Our interests in Syria are known, limited and clear: first of all, to maintain the status quo in the southern Syria region, and to prevent threats against Israel. The second thing is to prevent harm to the Druze community,” Israel’s overseas minister Gideon Saar mentioned in July.

In Majdal Shams, some within the Druze neighborhood welcomed Israel’s strikes, which additionally hit Syria’s protection ministry within the capital Damascus.

“We have members of the Druze community in the Israeli army, and I do not care if they are from Majdal Shams or not. They are Druze, so I fight with them, and they fight 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 think this is the poison that is being put in the discourse and trying to fuel all the hatred among 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 must recognize that any attempt to fragment the unity of the Syrian people or to exclude any of its components is a direct threat to Syria’s stability,” he mentioned in a speech shortly after agreeing to a ceasefire in Sweida. “The Syrian state is committed to protecting all minorities and sects in the country and will proceed with holding all violators accountable, regardless of who they are.”

However the preventing in Sweida has solely widened sectarian rifts and emphasised factional identities as soon as once more.

“I used to be secular before. But I’m 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 observe the Druze faith and has began praying once more.

Nuha Musleh contributed reporting from the Golan Heights.