Israel has announced its readiness to defend Syria's Druze community amid escalating violence in the country, which has led to the mass killing of civilians and raised tensions between the Syrian government and minority groups.
The violence, which erupted last week, involved fighters aligned with Syria's new government and forces loyal to ousted President Bashar al-Assad. Israel’s government spokesperson, David Mencer, described the violence as a “massacre of civilians” and confirmed that Israel is prepared, if necessary, to defend the Druze, although he did not elaborate on how.
The Druze are Arabs who follow a religion that is an offshoot of Islam, and their communities can be found in Israel, Syria, and Lebanon.
On Monday, Syria’s Islamist-led government stated that it had completed a military operation targeting a nascent insurgency. The fighting primarily took place in coastal provinces, home to most of Syria’s Alawite minority, to which Assad belongs. The Alawites, an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam, have held political control over the Sunni Muslim majority for decades.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based monitoring group, reported that 973 civilians were killed by government forces and allied fighters in reprisal attacks. Additionally, over 250 Alawite fighters and more than 230 members of the government security forces lost their lives in the violence. These figures have not been independently verified by Reuters.
Israel is home to a small Druze community, and approximately 24,000 Druze live in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, a territory Israel captured from Syria during the 1967 Six-Day War and later annexed in 1981, a move that is not widely recognized internationally.
Many Syrian Druze have relatives in the Golan Heights, and in response to the violence, Israel announced on Sunday that it would allow Syrian Druze to work in the region.
Earlier, on March 1, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz directed the military to be prepared to defend a Druze town located in the suburbs of Damascus, should it come under attack from Syrian government forces.
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