Druze dilemma

Golan Heights Druze are split between traditional loyalty to the Assad regime, support for Syrian rebels and a growing phenomenon to reconcile with Israel

By ANDREW FRIEDMAN
Druze521 (photo credit: BAZ RATNER / REUTERS)
Druze521
(photo credit: BAZ RATNER / REUTERS)
For 64-year-old Nazm Khater, the mere mention of his childhood as a Syrian citizen brings a wistful look to his eye. Sitting amid his lush cherry and apple orchard on the outskirts of Majdal Shams, the international border is just a few hundred meters further down the wadi, but Khater feels that his beloved Syria is both close enough to touch and a lifetime of memories away.
Khater was 18 years old when Israel captured the Golan Heights in 1967, old enough both to remember an idyllic period of time during which people were free to travel at will around the region.
“My father was a merchant in Massada,” Khater tells The Jerusalem Report. “We used to travel from our home in Kuneitra to Damascus – it’s only a 40 minute drive or so – or up to Marjyoun, Lebanon. There were no borders, and no enmity between the peoples of the region. It could be like that again – it will be like that again when the Heights are returned to their rightful owners – Syria.”
If older Druze remain nearly united in their loyalty to Syria, there are also emerging signs that the fighting in Syria has brought up questions of identity and political affiliation for the younger generation. This generation gap is apparent both in private conversation and in observing shop fronts on Majdal Shams’s main drag on a Thursday afternoon in early May. The clothing shops operated by older people sell traditional Druze garb; 20-somethings on the same street sell Adidas and Nike sports clothes.
Similarly, but more significantly, are the television programs that are visible from the street. Nearly all the young people we observed were tuned in to the Arab Idol television program; some of the ones who weren’t were tuned to Hebrew-language radio stations. On the other hand, several older shopkeepers were watching Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah deliver a live address on Lebanon’s al-Manar station, a clear indication where their loyalties lie.
That’s not surprising, if you ask Dolan Abu-Salah, the 35-year-old mayor of Majdal Shams. For one thing, older Syrians grew up in Syria and experienced the fear and the trauma of the Six Day War in 1967, so one would expect them to have retained strong loyalty to Syria. But he said their children and grandchildren who were born in Israel do not have the same forgiving attitude towards the atrocities happening on a daily basis on the other side of the border.
“Of course, many people publicly say they identify with Syria and with the regime there,” Abu-Salah tells The Report.
“They’ve all got close family in Syria and know full well that expressing pro-Israel or anti-Syria sentiments could well have deadly consequences for their loved ones over the border. Also, left-wing Israeli politicians have often spoken of the ‘need’ to give the Golan back to Syria in exchange for peace. So people are also concerned they could one day find themselves under Syrian administration. Let’s just say that strong, public support for Israel would not be looked kindly upon by a future Syrian government, no matter who that government there is run by.”
That is also true for younger folks – they, too, have relatives in Syria, and Abu-Salah says that partly explains the reticence of many Druze in his town to take the public step of accepting Israeli citizenship. But he also says that the fact that only about 11 percent of Majdal Shams residents have accepted Israeli citizenship (approximately 1,200 people, out of a total municipal population of just under 11,000) does not contradict the fact that young Druze increasingly – and happily – see themselves as part of Israel. “There are a lot of reasons for this phenomenon. Our religion and culture instructs us to be loyal citizens to whatever political administration we live under. And we know full well that we are the only Druze in the region who have the right to speak our minds openly and who receive a full complement of civil and welfare services from the state they pay taxes to.
Why would we choose dictatorship in Syria over democracy in Israel?” the mayor asks.
Passing conversations with young people around Majdal Shams seemed to confirm Abu-Salah’s thesis. Several young people interviewed for this article said that while they felt cultural ties to Syria, they do not feel the same ties to the country that their parents and grandparents do. One teenage boy said he would consider accepting Israeli citizenship because he wants to travel abroad. (Most residents here are effectively prevented from traveling abroad because as non-citizens, they are not entitled to an Israeli passport. Instead, they are eligible for United Nations-issued Laissez-Passer documents, which are not recognized by many countries.) Another 25-year-old woman said that while she isn’t interested in becoming an Israeli citizen, she also said she is mostly interested in working and making a living, not politics. She travels with friends several times a year to enjoy the nightlife in Haifa or Tel Aviv (a two and two-and-a-half hour drive away, respectively) and has only visited Syria once.
“Mainly, I just want to live my life,” she said in fluent Hebrew. “Look out at the street here – it’s Thursday evening, and the street is starting to fill up. In a couple of hours, there will be so much traffic here you won’t be able to move, and people will be out enjoying the weekend. I’m concerned about the violence in Syria, but it doesn’t really affect me here, and I think most of my friends would say the same thing. ” Significantly, however, neither young person would permit their names to be published. Both said they were concerned that their views would endanger family members in Syria, and could also carry social consequences back at home.
Faced with the reality that the younger generation could be reconciling itself to a Druze-Israeli identity, Nazm Khater looks out at his cherry orchards with a sigh. It’s a notion that was anathema for his generation, and for the first generation of Druze born under Israeli control. It is also one he feels is a sign of youthful blindness.
“I know the kids here,” he says. “They naturally see the fighting in our homeland and they think it’s better in Israel. But when they grow up they’ll see the light. They’ll come to see the reality in Israel and they’ll realize they’ve been duped.”
Like nearly everyone in Majdal Shams, Khater says he is worried about the fighting he hears daily emanating from the Syrian side of the valley. All of his immediate family – including three children and several grandchildren – live on what he calls the “Israeli occupied Syrian Heights,” but he has friends and extended family members on the other side of the border, who are very much at risk as fighting intensifies between rebel and government forces.
But Khater says his concerns transcend his own personal acquaintances and loved ones. Rather, his main concern is the greater good of Syria, not for one regime or another. His main prayer, he says, is for Syria to realize its enormous potential, but for that to happen, the country needs to unite behind its rightful leader – President Bashar al-Assad.
“You don’t like Mr. Bashar,” Khater asks with a mischievous smile.
“Why, because the newspapers say that 70,000 people have been killed? So what? Compare that to the 50 million people killed in World War II and you’ll see it’s not so bad.
“Look, there have certainly been problems in Syria over the years – corruption has been very bad, for instance. But you can also see the cup as being half-full. Until the riots started two years ago, your average Syrian lived a very good life. The education system there is terrific, and nobody pays to go to school or university. There is no country on earth more beautiful than Syria – look around you and see for yourselves. The violence will blow over, and Syria will once again shine.”
Compare that to the views of Randa Maddah, a 30-year-old native of Majdal Shams. As a student at Damascus University a decade ago, she said it was clear there were deep-rooted problems with the Assad regime, especially government corruption, but she felt the Syrian people had been terrorized into submission by the feared mukhabarat, or secret police. She says she was as surprised as anyone when anti-Assad protests broke out in March, 2011.
“I believed the Syrian people had become so cowed that they would never rise up against the regime, that the people had simply gotten used to living under a dictatorship,” she says. “But once the protests started, I think people found an inner conviction that Syrians can solve Syria’s problems. Yes, there are a lot of them to solve – the most pressing issue is sectarianism. We’ve got to find a way to live peacefully together, with basic freedoms that people everywhere want, like freedom of the press.
“But the people I’ve spoken to are completely committed to that goal.
There’s no way that Assad will survive. The revolution will outlast him because there are a lot of things that people want to achieve. They can’t do that under the current regime,” Maddah says.
According to Moshe Ma’oz, a professor emeritus of Hebrew University’s Department of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies and a leading expert on Syrian politics and culture, the current fighting in Syria has placed the Druze community in both countries in a difficult position. On the one hand, rebel forces are said to have slaughtered Druze civilians (and other minorities) on the Syrian side of the border, just a few kilometers from the homes in Majdal Shams.
On the other hand, the Druze in Syria have enjoyed government protection during the more than 40 years of Alawite rule in Syria. In a region where political alliances are taken seriously and where breaches are not easily forgiven, there is deep-seated reticence to abandon Assad as he fights for his political life.
Ultimately, Ma’oz predicts the Druze community in Syria and Israel will show flexibility in its loyalties. He expects Druze leaders to gauge their political interests in both countries and to “go with the flow” as far as politically possible.
“Really, I don’t think the leadership in Damascus will determine very much,” Mao’z tells The Report. “You’ve got to remember – the Druze aren’t looking for an independent country. For starters, there aren’t enough of them [less than 1.1 million in Syria, Israel and Lebanon]. Even more important, they don’t view themselves as a separate nation, but rather as a subset of the Arab people. Politically, that gives them flexibility to see where the winds blow and to adjust accordingly.” 