Druze Community in Israel Watches as Jihadists Terrorize Syria’s Suweida Region

MAJDAL SHAMS, the Golan Heights — Residents of this Golan community are trying to keep daily tabs on their brethren across the border, at Syria’s Druze Mountain, where a group of jihadists from across the world are following last month’s massacre of Druze community members with a siege of the Suweida region. “I’d say these people are animals, but that would be unfair — to animals,” the mother of a slain Majdal Shams boy, Lina Shaar, says. She refers to the jihadists who last month descended on Suweida, where they massacred Druze men, women, and children, raped girls as young as 12, and publicly humiliated the locals by shaving their signature mustaches.On Wednesday President Trump’s ambassador to Turkey, Tom Barrack, met the leader of Israel’s Druze community, Sheikh Muwafat Tarif, at Paris. They discussed the outrage over the siege of Suweida among Druze from Israel, Syria, and Lebanon. Members of the army commanded by Syria’s president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, alongside Islamist volunteers from places like Chechnya and Afghanistan, are joining neighboring Bedouin’s tribes in surrounding the Syrian Druze’s capital in a tight siege. The Suweida crisis will not be over soon, a researcher at the northern Israel-based Alma center, Avraham Levine, tells the Sun. A resident of a nearby Golan community, Mr. Levine says that Israel will support the Druze, even as “Joulani won’t like it,” using Mr. Sharaa’s old jihadi moniker. Yet, he adds, “we have a mutual interest in maintaining Syria’s stability,” so a solution might be found. Following Israel’s capture of the Golan in 1967, Majdal Shams’s residents and other Druze in the Heights wondered if it would eventually return to Syria. They kept their Syrian citizenships and maintained some loyalty to Damascus. No longer: The town’s residents are now fluent in Hebrew and increasingly feel part of Israel, even as, like all Druze, their first loyalty is to their land.Ms. Shaar greets the Sun near what used to be a soccer field where her 10-year-old son, Milar, was murdered last year. She pulls out her phone to show a video that the boy recorded for a school assignment shortly before a Hezbollah missile killed him. In it, Milar wishes for peace in perfect Hebrew, starting with a line from a classic Israeli pop song: “You and I will change the world.” Bulldozers are plowing the field where a monument is being built for the July 24, 2024, event that changed Israel’s war against Hezbollah. Last year Milar was playing soccer there with his friends when a missile from Lebanon landed on the field. He was the youngest of nine boys and three girls killed in the attack. The shocking loss of 12 innocent children drew headlines around the world.The event launched one of the most successful military operations in the two-year, seven-front war that started on October 7, 2023. Israeli jets hit Hezbollah’s top military commanders and nearly obliterated its missile arsenal. After beepers exploded in the hands of the terrorists, the charismatic Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was also killed.A year later, Ms. Shaar is still grieving. At lunch on that fateful day, she says, her husband grilled some meat for her, little Milar, and his three much older siblings. “Milar cut up each piece of meat, ate half of it, and fed me the other half,” she says. “With each bite he said, ‘You’re the best mommy in the world.’”She had no idea that hours later her boy’s life would end according to God’s designs, as she describes it in her faith. The Druze believe in reincarnation, but Ms. Shaar is still struggling with the loss. “It is hard for me to talk about it even with close friends and relatives,” she says. The mothers of the 12 murdered children meet often, she adds, and “they’re the only ones who can fully get it.”These days, the town is abuzz over the fate of relatives across the border. Until a few years ago, the residents would go to a hill at the edge of town, waving to and calling out for relatives across an electronically armed fence that separates the Israeli Golan from Syria.The border site, known as the “Shouting Mount,” is now deserted, as the Druze of Majdal Shams communicate with their relatives at Suweida through WhatsApp. Yet, communication is often disrupted, as the Jihadists that surround Suweida interrupt internet services. Food, medicine, fuels, and other necessities are in short supply.Prior to the American ambassador’s Paris meeting with the Druze leader on Wednesday, Mr. Barrack facilitated a meeting of top Jerusalem and Damascus diplomats. For the first time the Syrian foreign minister, Assad al-Shaibani, and Israel’s minister of strategic affairs, Ron Dermer, publicly acknowledged their meeting.Mr. Dermer reportedly raised the tense situation at Syria’s Druze Mountain. Mr. Barrack is attempting to mediate an agreement that would allow Israel to send aid to the Suweida. One plan is to secure a corridor to Syria’s Druze Mountain, which would likely start near Majdal Shams.The Star of David is increasingly visible at Suweida, where it was once banned. In the July massacre, the Israeli air force stopped the new Syrian army’s tanks from reaching Suweida. Its residents are now asking Israel for more support to repel the jihadists. “We Druze believe in peace and co-existence with everybody, Sunni, Shiite, Christians, Jews,” Ms. Shaar says. “People of all beliefs are the same, but these fanatic killers, they are really bad.”

Druze Community in Israel Watches as Jihadists Terrorize Syria’s Suweida Region

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