Minority Protection in the New Syrian Government

"There isn’t a single home in the whole province that isn’t grieving someone."

"The youngest victim was 3 months old, killed by shrapnel that hit her stomach. This one was 14. She was slaughtered [young girl, her head turned to the side a scarlet line across her throat]."

"These are only the people we know about and who could reach us [many victims were buried in makeshift graves near people’s homes because the hospital had been surrounded during much of the battles]."

"The final tally will be much worse." 

 Randa Mihrez, one of the coroners at Sweida National Hospital

 

"They were screaming, and I tried to move them, to help them somehow. But I kept slipping on the blood."

"One relative was bleeding out and barely alive. He was begging, ‘Shoot me.’ But I had no weapons on me. I would have done it otherwise."

"[He heard the gunmen say] 'Kill them all. We don’t want them identifying us'."

Hatem Radhwan, 71, Druze Blacksmith 

 

"Initially, we wanted to bury them in the hospital’s backyard, but administrators worried we’d contaminate the water reservoir."

"The bodies were decomposing too much in the sun, they were becoming unrecognizable. We just couldn’t wait anymore [the man who bulldozed a mass grave for 149 people from the hospital either unidentified or whose families were unable to bury them]."

Basel Abu Saab, on a bare mountain outside Sweida's outskirts 

A group of Druze factions move displaced families from the city to the mountains in response to the battles with the Bedouins, Sweida, Syria.  (Hasan Belal/For The Times)

 

"On July 13th, a Bedouin group kidnapped a man and took his car. In retaliation, an armed group linked to the owner detained Bedouins in Swaida’s suburbs. The situation escalated: retaliatory kidnappings, property seizures, then shelling from Bedouin groups, which killed eight people, including a child. Druze fighters mobilized. Mediation led to the release of the hostages by July 14."

"Despite that resolution, on July 15, the ministries of interior and defense announced plans to forcibly enter Swaida to “restore peace.” Many interpreted this as a signal of Israeli approval, believing the Syrian government would not risk a direct retaliatory strike by Israel otherwise. The government’s offensive began from Daraa, targeting western Swaida. Resistance followed—not only from al-Hajari’s groups but also from Rejal El Karama, who supported integration with the state but were not consulted and opposed the incursion."

"A video showing Druze fighters humiliating government forces—including handcuffing and verbally abusing them—prompted further army mobilization. Later videos appeared to show the government forces being executed. The incident intensified the government fighters’ resolve, and the Druze’s basic defenses were quickly overrun. Government forces entered al-Mazra’a, a key village, without resistance. Still, reports of looting and burning houses emerged."

"As the offensive pushed forward, shelling hit residential areas, with reports of significant casualties and destruction of properties. To minimize casualties, identical statements from al-Hajari and Jarbouh welcomed state forces; however, violence continued. Videos surfaced showing fighters without uniforms, foreign accents, homes ablaze, and the public humiliation of elderly civilians. Al-Hajari said the government coerced him into the statement to prevent further bloodshed, but after continued attacks, he called for mass mobilization."

"Numerous Facebook videos showed killings, looting, and shelling. Druze ambushes intensified, and al-Hajari again called for international protection. Israeli airstrikes soon followed, targeting heavy weaponry and demanding a full army withdrawal. The violence triggered a broader popular uprising beyond organized armed groups, forcing many regime forces to retreat."

By Majd AlGhatrif, Atlantic Council 

One of the Druze injured from the city of Sweida receiving treatment at the National Hospital following the battles that took place between the Bedouins and the Druze factions in Sweida, Syria.

(Hasan Belal/For The Times)

 

 Ahmed al-Sharaa, once named Abu Mohammad al-Juliani when he led a terrorist group allied with al-Qaeda, has won the support of Western leaders, most notably U.S. President Donald Trump who was charmed by the young man wearing immaculately designed Western suits, bearded and smiling, claiming "He's a young, attractive guy. He's got a real shot at holding it together", as interim president of a new Syria. A Syria that the new president, after the ouster of Bashar al-Assad with a 14-year civil war of vicious attrition behind him, promised would respect the human rights of Syria's minorities. 

 

Minorities in Syria -- Alawites, Christians, Druze, Kurds, weren't so sure. Nor was Israel, that al-Sharaa/al-Juliano could be trusted to maintain a firm  hold over the Islamist groups that comprised part of the new government's military from the temptation to shoot rockets over the Golan Heights again, at Israeli towns and villages. The Syrian minorities had little option but to wait and see whether the new government's vow to preserve the rights of Syria's minority sects and clans would eventuate, even while the West was persuaded that this was an entirely new Syria.

 

And then, in March and April the coalition of extremists that comprised the new Syrian military went on a rampage within the Alawite community when some 1,500 Alawites were slaughtered. Giving due cause for the other minorities to wonder when their turn would be next. Al-Sharaa/Al-Juliano was shocked, shocked at the carnage, denying his military was involved, claiming that these were outlier Islamist groups -- nothing to do with him and his government. Then the Christians became targets.

 

And finally a week ago, government troops joined local Bedouin tribes to enter the Druze town of Sweida near the Syrian border with Jordan. Long-standing sectarian and ethnic antagonism was on full display as soldiers and Bedouin fighters entered the Sweida hospital to murder patients in their beds. The city of 75,000 was treated to widespread brutality. Reports of rape and Druze women taken hostage. reports of a man tied to a chair and set on fire, his wife and children forced to watch. Young Druze men were bound and forced to jump at gunpoint from balconies.

 

The outbreak of violence in southern Syria's Druze-majority Suweida province has caused alarm in recent days. Jon Donnison, BBC

 

Syrian soldiers, in one video clip, were shown to rip the moustache from a man's face, along with the skin, to great laughter. Druze men were humiliated, forcefully having their moustaches shaved off, where in Druze culture the moustache is a sign of respect and manhood. Hundreds of Druze from Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights crossed into Syria to fight with their Syrian Druze brethren. The IDF warned them to return to Israel. And in response to appeals from Israeli Druze who are loyal Israeli citizens, the IDF took to the skies to bomb government troops in defense of the Syrian Druze.

 

Tensions between the Bedouin and Druze in the area periodically erupted into violence since the fall of the Assad government, but the attack on Sweida was wholesale slaughter, the Druze overwhelmed by the numbers of Sunni Islamist groups joining the Bedouin clans and government soldiers in their murderous rampage. Israel's protective response against Syrian government forces did not win favour in the Trump White house. President Trump's boasts of easily turning swords into ploughshares have not gone well in Ukraine and Gaza.

 

Around 1,500 people from Bedouin tribal families who had been held in Sweida governorate were evacuated earlier this week under a ceasefire agreement, following fierce clashes between tribal forces and Druze gunmen loyal to religious leader Hikmat al-Hijri.  (Rami Alsayed / NurPhoto via Getty Images)

 

 

A Jewish State for all its Citizens

"The recent passing of the 'Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People' has generated a wave of criticism in both Israel and abroad. Yet the law did little more than institutionalize not only the 70-year-long reality of Israel’s existence as a Jewish state in accordance with General Assembly Resolution 181 of November 29, 1947 but also the stipulation of the League of Nations, the UN’s predecessor, in the same vein."
"On July 24, 1922, the League recognized 'the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine' as 'the grounds for reconstituting their national home in the country' and appointed Britain as the Mandatory for Palestine, with the explicit goal of 'placing the country under such political, administrative and economic conditions as will secure the establishment of the Jewish national home.' Some 96 years later to the day, the Knesset echoed the League’s resolution, acknowledging the Land of Israel as 'the historical homeland of the Jewish people, in which the State of Israel was established' and defining this state as 'the national home of the Jewish people, in which it fulfills its natural, cultural, religious and historical right to self-determination'."
Efraim Karsh, director, Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, emeritus professor of Middle East and Mediterranean studies, King’s College London; editor, Middle East Quarterly
Shaul Bartal, research associate, Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies

Tens of thousands of Israelis protesting in solidarity with the Druze community against the nation-state law at a Tel Aviv demonstration, August 4, 2018.\ Moti Milrod

"All our lives we took pride in an enlightened, democratic, and free state of Israel with the freedom and dignity of man as a supreme value. We never questioned the Jewish identity of the state." 
"No one can teach us about sacrifice. No one can preach to us about loyalty. Military cemeteries and hundreds of fallen soldiers will testify to it. The same way we fight for the existence of the state, we are determined to fight for the right to live in equality and dignity."
"We are Israelis. We are brothers."
Sheikh Muafak Tarif, Druze spiritual leader, Israel

Druze demonstrators take part in a protest against 'Jewish State Nation Law in Rabin Square on August 4, 2018 in Tel Aviv, Israel.    (Photo by Amir Levy/Getty Images)

"The feelings of our Druze brothers and sisters touch my heart. I want to tell them: There is nothing in this law that infringes on your rights as equal citizens of the state of Israel, and there is nothing in it that harms the special status of the Druze community in Israel."
"The people of Israel, and I among them, love and appreciate you. We deeply appreciate our partnership and the covenant between us."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

Famously, the devil is in the details. And when Israel a week ago announced its new basic law enshrining Jewishness as the spirit and soul of the State of Israel, it was fulfilling in essence, its original mandate, to build a home and a haven for the Jews of the world where they would find comfort and security because they are Jews in a Jewish world where no power can disrupt their sense of homecoming and their secure place in the world, in a nation that values and protects their interests as its purpose of existence.

On the way to becoming law, government waylaid its sense of obligation to and appreciation for those disparate communities within the greater community which has made sacrifices equal to those of Jews and who considered themselves to be equally committed to the State of Israel, for it was also their state, it was where their peace of mind, their lives and their livelihoods and their loyalty lay in every conceivable way. So while Jews celebrated the passing of the new law, the reaction of the Druze community offered sober second thought.

"It's enough of patting us on the shoulder and saying, 'You are our brothers, we love you'. There has to be full equality. We are the first to run into battle and the first to die on the flag. It's as if the Israeli people simply abandoned us. They say they didn't. But according to the clauses of this law, we don't exist", protested Shadi Nasraldeen, 45, a 26-year career in the IDF behind him. He now works at a national monument at Daliyat El-Karmel, a Druze village, dedicated to the over 420 IDF and security force fallen who happened to be Druze.

Those who carefully framed the wording of the new Israeli basic law affirming Israel as a Jewish state had a hard focus on Israel as a reborn nation risen from the ashes of ancient Zion twice sacked and destroyed, the Israelites sent into exile for thousands of years, its diaspora living all over the globe and wherever they lived viewed as inferior, subject to discrimination, persecution, violence and pogroms until the final and most horrendous of the atrocities eliminated one-third of international Jewry, six million of Europe's Jewish population.

Understandably, the emotional anguish of such a colossal catastrophe doesn't diminish with time; the existential threat lingers along with the incorrigibility of anti-Semitism worming its sinister pathology of deadly hatred wherever Jews live. The presence of a Jewish state -- the Jewish state, the sole haven on this planet for Jews -- is symbolic of universal salvation, a final rescue from the Angel of Death, from slander, humiliation, misery and historical reality of a people rejected. The euphoria of relief precluded extraneous thought of how that announcement would affect others.

And now it is known. The tiny Druze minority within Israel, totally loyal to the state and valuing with their lives their place within that state sees their security under threat, their sacrifices unappreciated, their future uncertain, so little wonder they now express the emotional harm being done their presence in Israel, their future aspirations. "The nation-state of the Jewish people" must now launch themselves into an exercise to correct the course taken that threatens to alienate the Druze community of 145,000 valued citizens and reverse the Druze interpretation of betrayal.

Protesters wave Israeli and Druze flags at Rabin Square during a demonstration in Tel Aviv against the nation-state law, on August 4, 2018. (Luke Tress / Times of Israel staff)

Many Israeli Jews are appalled at the emotional harm being suffered by their fellow Israelis, a result of their being taken for granted, not realizing that their perception of abandonment and its devastating disappointment does no credit to the Jewish state. A large number of Israelis have launched an appeal for amendments to the law that would recognize the minority status of an exceptional calibre of people, to extend their status to full equality in every measure of the law as a just requirement for relations to be mended.

Druze, Circassians, Bedouin, Christians and some Arab Muslims qualify for the acknowledgement of their position inherent in a special category and that must receive formal and legal recognition in acknowledging their vital importance in achieving a Jewish state that reflects not only its Jewishness but its mutual dependency on those who have given it unqualified loyalty, considering themselves an integral and integrated part of the whole. They have more than proven themselves.

There can be no comparison between their communities' assimilation and those of the larger Israeli-Arab Palestinians who, despite citizenship, have a divided allegiance and whose faithfulness to the nation is fraught with tension and betrayal.

Tens of thousands participate in a Druze-led protest in Tel Aviv against the Jewish nation-state law, on August 4, 2018. (Adam Rasgon/ Times of Israel staff)

Killing A Country

"After the destruction and killings that took place, it is difficult for the Syrian people to coexist [in] a central state."
Mustafa Osso, Kurdish leader, vice-president, Syrian National Coalition

"Syria as we've known it since it was formed one hundred years ago -- it's finished, I think. What the international community will have to recognize is de facto partition, and work with different parties to try and stabilize those areas [representing sectarian, ethnic, tribal conflict]."
Andrew Tabler, Syria expert, Washington Institute for Near East policy

"Even though a lot of newly independent states after the Second World War in Africa, the Middle East and Asia have borders that were drawn by colonizers, the strong tendency within international law has been to respect those boundaries."
Kenneth Schultz, professor, political science, Stanford University

A Syrian man carries his two girls as he walks across the rubble after a barrel-bomb attack on the rebel-held neighborhood of al-Kalasa in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo on Sept. 17. (KARAM AL-MASRI/AFP/Getty Images)

A hundred years ago, disparate ethnic and religious communities were patched together into a single state and that state was named Syria. Originally when France had colonizing rule over the area, French authorities thought of localizing boundaries that would produce smaller countries, one for the Alawite minority, another for Druze, another for Aleppo, and another small state for Christians, and one for the Kurds. Actually six statelets were contemplated.

The end result, however, was to crowd the various disparate populations into a single state. Any restiveness from among the various populations was kept tamped down by the dictatorial autocracies that resulted, through intimidation and violence. The situation certainly not unique to Syria; it prevailed throughout the Middle, Africa, Asia where colonial powers played their boundary-and-naming games to their hearts' content.

Once a dominating figure is removed, however, just as occurred with Yugoslavia, the constituent parts renew ancient enmities and agitate for separation in recognition of their ethnic, tribal, clan, religious differences, irreconcilable once the unifying force of threat and violence has been removed. First in Iraq, then in Libya, and now in Syria; total destabilization and chaotic anarchy, branches of Islam reawakened from their temporary truce to embark on bloodshed.

Division of the affected geography takes its organic turn, and demands follow that the separation be recognized and respected and given legal authority. The Kurds in Iraq and Syria have effectively asserted their regional sovereignty much to Turkey's rage, though they have not yet been given official recognition. The Kurdish regions, in fact, come closer to the Western ideal of tolerance and democracy than any other region in the Middle East save for Israel.

Iraq did nominally recognize the three areas that emerged as a natural consequence of the removal of Saddam Hussein; one for the Kurds, another for the dominant Shiites and a third for the minority Sunnis. But the Shiite majority long held in thrall to Saddam and his Sunni supporters was unable to abide a call for equality among all three, inviting a lash-back that resulted in the Islamic State, which then spread its venomous violent entitlements into Syria and beyond.

In Syria, the minority Alawite Shiite regime of the Assad dynasty has devastated the country in its furiously inflamed response to the majority Sunni demand for equality. There was no military response too savage to be used by Syria's President Bashar al-Assad against his defiant civilian population who supported the Sunni rebel army responding to Assad's brutality by countering his forces with their own.

Zein Al-RifaI/AFP/Getty Images    A Syrian man carries a body after it was removed from rubble following a reported barrel bomb attack by government forces in Aleppo on May 20, 2015.

As grotesquely violent as Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant has been, Syria's military has been even more so, simply without the public relations display that Islamic State is so fond of. The difference of course, is that the butchery is being carried out by a state against its own people, not merely a band of jihadist terrorists rampaging through the landscape to declare their conquests representative of their new and growing terror-state.

Prior to the outbreak of Syria's civil war, while Bashar al-Assad was still a smiling autocrat, not yet emerging into history as a blood-saturated paranoid-lunatic-tyrant, he presided over a population of 23-million people. Of that number fully half has been displaced; 7-million internally and a further four million as refugees, a huge number of whom now flood Europe for haven and a future.

So while the regime in which the Alawite sect of President Assad  controls Damascus and the Alawite region along the Mediterranean coast along with  other cities and connecting corridors as one portion, the central government no longer has de facto authority over other regions. The Kurdish Syrians have authority over the northeast while the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant holds the major portion of the Sunni east.

"What we have today is a partition that no one wants to acknowledge formally", Ahmad Shami, an opposition leader from suburban Damascus stated. The simple fact is that a quarter-million Syrians have been slaughtered in the past four years of civil conflict, and most have found death at the command of their president. How likely is it that the majority Sunnis will complacently agree to a unified country should peace ever arrive?

The Sunni rebels who control areas in the north and south will have every reason to demand that their numbers, heritage and sacrifices merit them their very own parcel of Syria. And the Druze as well are eyeing the possibility of southern Syrian autonomy of their own. The conflict has created a poisonous aura of sectarian and ethnic hatred. The puzzle of mixed-populations in Aleppo and Damascus would have to be faced.

With partition will inevitably come the crisis of ongoing demographic changes, as the various divisions further divide themselves, cleansing each region of the presence of those who do not reflect the majority monoculture/ethnicity/sect. During the process there will be account-settling, venomous accusations, campaigns of slander and disentitlements, reflective of the descent into deadly madness that afflicted India with the partition resulting in Pakistan; Pakistan with the partition resulting in Bangladesh.

 

Failure of Lebanese Power-Sharing

"Is it reasonable that a country in the world cannot find a solution to its garbage crisis?"

"The crisis only exists in Lebanon, and the reason is that there is a crisis of splitting shares and the presence of greed and rottenness inside state institutions. The state is too weak to be able to address a garbage crisis."

"[Certain political parties in the government are asking the people to grant them] an authorization for deciding war and peace with the Israeli enemy."

"If you can’t resolve a waste crisis, how will you be able to resolve a war crisis or to confront the enemy that is backed by all countries in the world?"
MP Mohammad Raad, head, Hezbollah’s Loyalty to the Resistance parliamentary bloc

"We are ruled by corrupt losers. All of them -- warlords, legislators and ministers -- are working for their own interest and not those of the people"
"The will of the people will eventually succeed no matter how long it takes."
Nada Qadoura, Lebanese retiree, protester

A Lebanese protester holds a national flag during clashes with security forces following a demonstration against the ongoing trash crisis on August 25, 2015, in front of the seat of the government in Beirut (AFP Photo/)

The three major religious factions in Lebanon, Christian Lebanese, Sunni Muslims and Shiite Muslims, along with the minority Druze, Alawi and Ismaili have traditionally shared governing the country. That tradition continues, after the long civil war and invasion that shook the country to its core. The incursion of Palestinians and with them the PLO, bringing Israeli and Syrian troops into the country further divided loyalties.

The unsettled violence that permeated the country gave birth to Hezbollah, the militant terrorist Shiite group financed, trained and armed by the Iranian Republican Guard Corps. Since the 1980s chaos of violent destruction in the country, the uneasy government alliance protocol has picked up where it had left off, only the government is so corrupt and frozen in inaction that it hardly governs, not helped that Hezbollah is responsible for a third of the parliamentarians and its involvement in Syria's civil has further roiled Lebanon.

Lebanese have taken to the streets in protest demonstrations against their government's inability or disinterest in providing the most basic of municipal services to the population; garbage pickup. Garbage has been piling in the streets after the closure of the main Beirut garbage dump and no action has been taken to relieve the impasse of no garbage collection. "You Stink", an online protest group, has called rallies to revolt against political corruption.

A man throws out his garbage on piles of rubbish on the street in Beirut on July 28, 2015 (AFP Photo/Joseph Eid)

Police have responded by beating back protesters with clubs and water cannons, hurling stones at them, while protesters throw back rocks and water bottles at police. Protesters are demanding the resignation of the country's top-tier politicians as unfit to rule. The prime minister claimed that if a cabinet meeting scheduled for Thursday fails to produce a viable option "then there is no need for the council of ministers". 

Prime Minister Tammam Salam has gone so far as to give hints he may himself step away from government. The political system is clearly dysfunctional without a functioning cabinet or parliament, let alone a president. The organizers of the protest claimed that men they describe as political thugs began fighting with police, attempting to pull down a barbed wire fence separating the protesting crowds from the Lebanese government building, prompting them to recall their supporters.

Since May 2014, President Salam, a Sunni Muslim, has served as acting president of Lebanon. The political paralysis due to actions by Hezbollah and its allies, the Free Patriotic Movement of Michel Aoun, and the Shi'a Amal Party, has prevented the election of a new president, a post normally held by a Maronite Christian.

Lebanese politicians fear that Hezbollah has captured the protests over the lack of garbage pick-up  to use it "to create a power vacuum amid the [Lebanese] parliament's failure to elect a new president who is acceptable to everyone".

Islamist Terrorists Threatening The Druze

Beyond a doubt, it is interesting that the only Jewish state in the world, which is accused by its detractors of practising apartheid, is prepared to defend not only its citizens who are non-Jews, but at the insistence of those non-Jewish citizens, distant relatives living in another country entirely, from the viciously malign assaults of Islamist predators.

"I expect Israel to assist the Druze, just like it helps Jews all over the world", stated Ayoub Kara, an Israeli citizen, a member of the Knesset from within the Likud party who leads a campaign to convince Israel to become involved in aiding threatened Syrian Druze, in a proposed intervention which he describes as "major humanitarian aid".

Israel's Druze citizens have been fully involved in defending Israel. They serve in the army proudly and with distinction, accepting it as their duty as citizens of the country, in contrast to most Arab citizens of the Jewish state. Druze hold senior government positions. And Druze living in the Golan are supportive of Israel's authority. 

A member of the Druze community holds a Druze flag as he speaks to an Israeli soldier near the border fence between Syria and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, near Majdal Shams June 18, 2015.   Reuters/Baz Ratner

Islamist jihadists are threatening Israel's Golan Heights border with Syria. And the Druze population there are in the direct line of fire in the sense that Islamic State terrorists have made minority ethnic and religious groups a target of cleansing; raping and enslaving women and children, slaughtering men in their sweep to amass larger Iraqi and Syrian territory for absorption into their Islamist 'pure' Sharia "caliphate".

In 'apartheid' Israel, citizens of the country who are Druze demand aid for their co-religionists. A group from the al-Qaida-affiliated Nusra Front created a bloodbath in a recent attack on a Druze village. In launching an offensive against the Syrian regime's positions close to the Golan Heights, Syrian rebels surrounded the Druze village of Khadr.

The Southern Front alliance rebels together with the Haramoun Army targeted towns and villages in the Golan that are Druze communities. The Haramoun Army includes the ultraconservative Ahrar al-Sham as well as the al-Qaeda Syrian affiliate. It shelled the area encompassing those villages while Southern Front fighters advanced the battle on the ground.

The IDF may be preparing for the establishment of a "safe zone" for Syrian Druze on the Golan northern Israel frontier, according to security officials. The Prime Minister informed parliament his government is "closely following all developments on our borders", and that "my inclination is to take any action that is necessary."

Though officially neutral in the civil war that has engulfed Syria, should Israel respond to the plight facing the Druze, Israel could see itself flooded with a stream of refugees seeking safe haven.

An offshoot of Shiite Islam, About 700,000 Druze live in Syria. Smaller communities in Israel and the Israeli-held Golan heights have become integrally involved in Israeli politics, social life and the military. Family ties across borders represent another dimension. Protests were staged by thousands of Israeli Druze to demand that Israel give assistance to the Syrian Druze through military action, or humanitarian aid or the establishment of a safe zone.

"I'm pretty sure the government is looking into ways to get weapons to the Druze, if they're not already doing so", stated Moshe Maoz, professor emeritus of Middle East Studies, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. MK Kara visited Jordan for assurance from Jordanian officials that safe passage would be provided to the Druze.

A member of the Druze community uses binoculars to watch the fighting in Syria, from the Israeli side of the border fence between Syria and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, near Majdal Shams June 18, 2015.  Reuters/Baz Ratner