by Herb Keinon
While strategic considerations were still in play, the heart of the decision lay in defending the extended family of Israel’s own Druze—a gesture shaped as much by kinship as by security.
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Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes in Syria over the past decade, so this week’s attacks on Syrian tanks en route to Sweida and on the country’s military headquarters in Damascus should not have come as a surprise.
Yet they did, because this time was different.
These were not routine operations targeting Iranian arms transfers or Hezbollah positions. They were driven by something else: a sense of responsibility toward the Druze community in Syria.
Past strikes typically followed a narrow script: preventing weapons transfers, blocking entrenchment near the border, or responding to provocations. But this latest round marked a clear departure.
While strategic considerations were still in play, the heart of the decision lay in defending the extended family of Israel’s own Druze – a gesture shaped as much by kinship as by security.
Some 152,000 Druze live in Israel, and since a 1956 agreement with community leaders, Druze men have been conscripted into the IDF, fighting and dying alongside their Jewish counterparts in every conflict since.
The phrase Brit damim – a covenant of blood – has become shorthand for a loyalty that has gone well beyond slogans.
And these Druze have brothers and sisters, aunts, uncles, and cousins in Syria who have come under attack by Sunni Bedouin clans and Syrian government forces. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that more than 1,000 people have been killed over the last week in the Druze mountains area.
Israel's Druze population say they cannot stand by and watch from sidelines
Israel’s Druze, who feel as deep a connection to their co-religionists in Syria as Jews do to their brethren abroad, say they cannot stand by and watch from the sidelines. They are both urging Israel to act and preparing to take up arms themselves to defend their kin across the border.Israel did intervene, and its history with its own Druze population is central to understanding why it acted to protect Syrian Druze, even though it refrained from intervening just months ago when Alawites were being slaughtered elsewhere in Syria.
Israel’s strikes last week were not only about preventing a massacre – important in its own right – but about defending the extended family of a community it considers its “brothers.”
But there is more to the story than that. Israel’s actions are also about sending messages and correcting history.
There’s no way to understand this moment without going back to May 2000, when then-prime minister Ehud Barak abruptly pulled Israel out of southern Lebanon, leaving the South Lebanon Army (SLA) – its Christian and Druze allies – to face Hezbollah alone.
Some 6,000 SLA members and their families fled across the border, and many were resettled in Israel. But many others were captured, tried, and imprisoned.
This traumatic exit badly dented Israel’s image as a dependable ally. The message was clear: when interests shift, even blood partners can be abandoned.
That moment has haunted Israel ever since. It undermined its reputation as a loyal ally in the region and sent a chilling message to other minorities or militias contemplating alliance with the Jewish state: don’t count on a rescue when things go bad.
This week’s actions in Syria send a very different message and are also about correcting a historical stain.
There is also a message being delivered to other actors in the region, who are keen on seeing how reliable Israel is as an ally.
First and foremost in Gaza, where there have been efforts to align with certain clans willing to resist Hamas, such as the militia headed by Yasser Abu Shabab in the Rafah area.
For these actors, the Druze operation is instructive. It shows that Israel may be willing to use force not just in defense of itself, but in defense of those who side with it.
If Israel wants to erode Hamas’s hold on Gaza, it needs local allies. And those allies need a reason to believe that partnership with Israel doesn’t lead to a death sentence, that Israel does not forget those who stand with it. Watching the steps Israel is taking on behalf of the Druze in Syria might give them confidence in the future.
The actions in Syria, however, are risky. First of all, because intervening in Syria – however limited – always carries the potential for escalation. Secondly, because it puts Israel at odds with US policy.
Washington, to put it mildly, is not pleased with Israel’s recent actions in Syria. While Jerusalem may have seen the strikes as an act of defense and moral clarity, the Trump administration saw something else: unnecessary interference.
The administration is interested in propping up the regime of Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa as a way of creating stability in the region and has not hidden its desire to broker some kind of non-aggression pact between Israel and Syria. Just last month, Trump lifted long-standing sanctions against Damascus.
On Thursday, the US said it didn’t support the Israeli strikes, and State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said Trump and the State Department have “been very clear about our displeasure.”
On Sunday, Axios quoted one US official as saying that Trump “doesn’t like turning on the television and seeing bombs dropped in a country he is seeking peace in and made a monumental announcement to help rebuild.”
The US is concerned that the Israeli action might weaken Sharaa’s authority at a critical juncture and undermine months of careful diplomacy. From their perspective, Israel was introducing volatility at the very moment the US was trying to create stability.
This sets up an uncomfortable, though not unfamiliar, dynamic: Israel acting unilaterally to protect its red lines, even when that diverges from the US playbook.
This is not the first time that has happened, nor will it be the last.
What is compelling is that Israel was willing to take the risk this time to protect a community not even its own. The Syrian Druze never supported or fought for Israel. Quite the contrary. Nevertheless, their brothers in Israel have done so for decades, bravely and loyally.
This week’s strike was more than strategy or deterrence; it was a gesture of gratitude – a reminder that Israel remembers those who have stood with it. Israel’s covenant forged with its Druze citizens does not stop at the border. By moving to shield their kin across it, Jerusalem honored a bond written in blood.
Herb Keinon
Source: https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/article-861650
1 comment:
With the very mixed signals coming from the Syrian Druze throughout Syria and Israel having just supplied aid it is maybe time for a brief pause for the Druze to carefully reflect. They have a choice either the majority of their elders come out clearly & loudly to Israel & outside world (Trump too) seeking Israel's protection or not. This is basic common sense and not to much to ask
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