The Arab Druse of Israel are a loyal community to the Jewish state.
Will Israel get sucked into the Syrian quagmire to protect the Druse community near its border from the advancing threat of Islamic State?
Today, as pressure grows from the advancing forces of the Islamic State, the Syrian Druse community is preparing to defend and establish its own autonomous zone. This may also, for the first time since the war broke out more than four years ago, suck Israel, with its own Druse community of some 130,000 people, deep into the bloody Syrian quagmire.
The “Druse State” was an autonomous district during the days when the French ruled Syria and Lebanon between the two world wars. Its capital and central city was and still is As-Suwayda. During the state’s brief period of “independence,” the Druse led by Sultan al-Atrash rebelled in 1925 against the French occupiers. The revolt with a strong Syrian nationalist sentiment spread to engulf the whole of Syria, but was quashed within two years by the French. Still, the revolt did ensure that autonomy lasted until 1936 when the area’s special status was canceled and it was incorporated into Syria as part of the Franco-Syrian treaty signed the same year.
The Druse dream of independence vanished.
Though al-Atrash was a Syrian nationalist who showed solidarity with the Palestinians, he is still admired nowadays by Druse everywhere, including in Israel.