Eurasia Press & News
In mid-August, Syria’s Druze minority crossed a historic threshold. In its southern province, demonstrators demanded self-determination for the first time, rejecting Damascus’s authority and waving Israeli flags – a stunning departure for a community long known for cautious neutrality.
The shift came in the wake of July’s violence in Suweida, when tit-for-tat kidnappings between Druze and Bedouin communities spiralled into all-out clashes involving tribal militias, government forces, and Israeli airstrikes, leaving more than 1,000 dead, including at least 539 Druze civilians, and 100 women kidnapped.
Widespread displacement affected nearly 192,000 people across Suweida, Daraa, and Homs.
For many Druze, the lesson was brutal: Damascus would not protect them. In the conflict, one of many occurring across Syria, they appeared to take the side of the Bedouins, breaking a previous agreement not to enter the town.
What began as a local dispute has since widened into sectarian massacres and a humanitarian catastrophe – with tens of thousands of people displaced, hospitals overflowing with corpses, and aid blocked at checkpoints.
“This was not a clash,” Yahya Al-Aridi, a Paris-based Syrian media academic native to the affected province, told The New Arab. “Villages without fighters were invaded. Houses and businesses were looted, olive groves burnt, civilians slaughtered.”
The violence struck not only at lives and livelihoods but also at identity. The Druze long anchored their place in Syria in the legacy of the Great Revolt of 1925, when Sultan al-Atrash and his fighters helped lead the Arab struggle against Ottoman and French rule. By desecrating images of these nationalist heroes, government-aligned forces shattered the Druze narrative of Syrian unity.
Even Washington is adjusting its view. US Syria envoy Thomas Barrack recently acknowledged the need to consider “not a federation but something short of that, in which you allow everybody to keep their own integrity, their own culture, their own language, and no threat of Islamism”.
Survival, naivety, or betrayal?
Syrian analysts and Druze figures offer starkly different interpretations of Suweida’s pivot.
For Malik al-Abdeh, the Editor in Chief of Syria in Transition, the Israeli flags are a rational response to an existential threat.
“When your physical existence is threatened, you can make an alliance with the devil,” he says. “We’ve seen this before. Lebanese Christians allied with Israel in the 1980s. Sunnis cheered Israeli strikes on Iran and Hezbollah. This is not ideology, it is survival.”
Bassam Alahmad, from Syrians for Truth and Justice, gives a similar explanation. “The opposition once asked for no-fly zones and foreign intervention to protect themselves. Now, Druze are asking the same.”
Even now, “authorities themselves engage with Israel. Yet Druze are condemned for the same,” Abdulla K., a Damascus-based lawyer who preferred to remain anonymous, told TNA.
“The double standards are obvious. The truth is, all Syrians have been excluded, across all sects. Suweida is just the latest scapegoat.”
Ghassan Ibrahim, a British-Syrian journalist, sees it differently. He believes that demands by some segments of the Druze community are misguided.
“It is naivety and lack of leadership. Israel will never protect Suweida – it wants a deal with all of Syria, not a fragment. Sheikh al-Hijri has failed. Suweida needs real politicians, not clerics,” he said.
“Israel will drop him the moment it suits them,” he added, saying that their push for self-determination is not realistic.
Just this week, Sheikh Hikmat al-Hijri, a prominent leader in the province and openly hostile to Syria’s new authorities, reiterated demands for a separate Druze region.
His opponents accuse him of monopolising decision-making, rejecting ceasefire agreements, and siding with Israel.
Yahya Al-Aridi, however, says “he is not a military leader inviting Israel to bomb Syria but a spiritual umbrella – people of Suweida are behind him”.
In his assessment of the Druze leadership, Al-Abdeh stressed that the July violence in Suweida had a unifying effect on the communities that remain under siege as humanitarian aid remains restricted.
He noted that whatever divisions may have existed previously, the sheer scale of the assault pushed the community to rally around al-Hijri.
This has led to the recent formation of what is now called the ‘National Guard,’ an armed force meant to unite Druze militias previously known for infighting.
Nevertheless, recent self-determination demands by the Druze community have had a polarising effect.
“The sight of Druze protesters carrying Israeli flags shocked Syrians across communities. It deepened the ‘us versus them’ divide,” Ola Rifai, a Deputy Director for Outreach at the Centre for Syrian Studies, told TNA, underscoring the symbolic fallout.
“Israel’s manipulation of Druze identity – both for domestic politics and to exacerbate Syria’s fragmentation – carries lethal implications,” she added.
Ayman Abdel Nour, a Syrian Christian analyst, agrees. “Now all Druze, even students in Damascus or Aleppo, are branded as separatists or ‘friends of Israel’. Some have been expelled from universities, one was killed,” he told TNA. “Sectarian rhetoric tears apart national cohesion.”
“It is due to the government’s chosen slogan – ‘restoring state authority’ – that set the state in direct confrontation with a segment of its own people,” adds Rifai.
Israel’s calculus
Al-Abdeh points out that Israel’s involvement is not driven by altruism toward the Druze, but by its own security calculus.
“Israel fears Syrian territory becoming a launchpad for attacks like Hamas’s 7 October,” he says. “By enforcing demilitarisation south of Damascus, Israel sent a message: it holds leverage over Sharaa’s government.”
Since the fall of Assad, Israel has waged a campaign of destabilisation in Syria, launching hundreds of airstrikes to destroy military assets while seizing more land in the southwest.
Instrumentalising the Druze community, in part to maintain military control in the south, is also part of this strategy, analysts say, with the aim of keeping the new Syria weak and divided.
Recently, the idea of a ‘humanitarian’ corridor linking Suweida to the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights was proposed by Israeli officials, with the US reportedly attempting to broker an agreement.
It is thought that any agreement on this issue could open the door to the normalisation of ties with Israel and Syria, which Washington has been pushing for.
While the mechanics of such a corridor could work, it would be geographically challenging. Moreover, politically, the price is even higher.
“Israel can partition Syria into smaller states; it may see that as beneficial,” al-Abdeh said bluntly. “It wants to prevent both Iranian and Islamist threats. Fragmentation serves that purpose.”
A patchwork Syria?
For European officials, Suweida’s unrest complicates an already fragile engagement with post-Assad Syria.
“Europe must uphold territorial sovereignty,” says Pauline Raabe, a German analyst with Middle East Minds.
“It must prevent fragmentation while supporting Syrians in reconstruction and peacebuilding. Lifting sanctions was overdue, but aid must increase. Cooperation with the UN is essential to deliver services without legitimising non-state actors.”
She stresses that Europe must also speak with one voice. “The visit of European leaders to Damascus was important. Europe needs a joint foreign policy, independent of Washington, to pursue energy diversification and security cooperation with Levantine states. Suweida’s unrest shows the risks – but also the need for a long-term strategy.”
Malik al-Abdeh, on the other hand, argues that the crisis in Suweida cannot be resolved through piecemeal deals but requires reviving a broader international framework. He calls for resurrecting a ‘Friends of Syria’-style process, like the alliance that convened in 2013, but adapted to today’s realities.
“It cannot just be managed through bilateral agreements in Paris or Amman. The US, Europe, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia should be at the table, and eventually Russia and Israel too. Only with a roadmap and milestones – tied to reconstruction aid – can Syria move toward a national dialogue and a new political order.”
