Israel has a minority population of Druze Arabs – who, as a group (I assume there are always individual exceptions) are fiercely loyal to the country they are part of.
Druze villages n Syria have, it appears, always been loyal to the al-assad dictatorships of the past 50 years as well.
But now that al-assad, who apparently left them alone, is gone, these folks don’t know what to expect from whomever is eventually taking the country over. So they made a decision. And here, via this excerpt from David Israel’s article at The Jewish Press:
The Druze in Syria have long been loyal to the Assad regime, as their tradition requires following the leadership of the countries where they reside. As a result, since the 1967 Six-Day War, many Druze families have members on both sides of the ceasefire line.
After annexing the Golan on December 14, 1981, Israel offered citizenship to the Druze, but most rejected it and continued to identify themselves as Syrian. However, now that extremist Islamists with a reputation for murdering non-Muslims have taken over Syria, the estimated 600,000 Syrian Druze face an existential dilemma.
Thursday night’s meeting in southern Syria, in the Jabal al-Sheikh region, was held with the participation of dignitaries from the Druze community in the area, during which the dramatic demand to join their brethren in Israel was raised.
This decision, which was raised especially by the villagers of Hader, where the IDF has set up its defensive contingency against the rebels who are advancing south, reflects the position of the residents in the area, who proclaimed that they would stop Syrian Islamists from entering their area “over their dead bodies,” expressing firm opposition to any attempt to transfer the area to rebel control.
This is an interesting, fascinating, unique and potentially dangerous decision for Israel.
On its face, it is a compliment to Israel. These are Syrian citizens who are telling the world they feel safer in a majority-Jewish state than among their fellow Arabs. And, at least at first glance, it appears to be sincere – i.e. not some ruse to plant anti-Israel force in the country.
On the other hand, it would be an influx of hundreds of thousands of non-Jews into Israel. It would make the country less Jewish/more significantly influenced vote-wise by its Arab population (which already numbers about 20% and has a higher birthrate than the Jewish population) – with the increase being Arabs who, until a few weeks ago, were loyal to the murderous terrorist Israel-hating bashar al-assad. And there it no doubt at all that whoever takes over Syria will always consider these villages as Syrian, thus the victim of Israel imperialism, thus subject to potential invasion for the purpose of retaking the land.
That’s a real dilemma.
How will Israel handle it? How should Israel handle it? I confess I don’t know.
Let’s see what they do and talk about it as it happens.
