In a violent brew across southern Syria, the mostly Druze province of Sweida has witnessed an eruption of brutality over the past couple of days.
Tribal Bedouin militias initiated clashes that escalated once the Syrian government forces, somehow benefiting from the newfound status, joined in. Death tolls soared, numbering 500 civilians from the Druze community, subjected to summary executions, lootings, and humiliations, including, in some cases, the excruciating shaving of mustaches of Druze sheikhs and the utmost desecration of their religious insignia.
Israel reacted very quickly and very aggressively. Vowing to protect the Druze in a rather assertive, rare act of cross-border intervention, Israel struck from the air over two hundred targets in Sweida and Damascus, among them Syrian military armored convoys, weapon depots, and even the very headquarters of the Syrian Defense Ministry.
Not only is the crisis putting soft flesh on the bones of the fragile post-Assad order, but it also foregrounds a much deeper question: What, indeed, does Israel, as a newly minted regional superpower, owe in return?
A post-Iran war moment
This crisis unfolds just weeks after Israel’s 22-day war against Iran, a conflict that decisively crushed Tehran’s nuclear infrastructure and dismantled much of its forward operating network. But more than a military success, the war marked an irreversible turning point. Israel is no longer merely a resilient democracy fighting for survival. It is now the Middle East’s hegemon.
Such power comes with strategic obligations and moral ones.
The Druze community in Syria is not only a historic ally of Israel, with roots of military and social cooperation going back decades; it also sits on the front line between order and tribal disintegration. Their defense is both a strategic necessity and a moral imperative. To leave them at the mercy of Islamist factions like al-Jolani’s or al-Sharaa’s post-Assad coalition would be to invite another wave of jihadist entropy at Israel’s doorstep.
Markets, morality, and mandate of power
The aftershocks of the Iran war reshaped how Israel is perceived and how it must now act. Global markets responded to the war with optimism: Israeli equities and debt outperformed global benchmarks, and economists began speaking of a potential “peace dividend” borne of a de-risked regional order.
Arab capitals, too, adjusted their posture. While Western debates remain stuck in the Palestinian question as a domestic litmus test, the region is moving on. Prime Minister Netanyahu has, for two years now, led a quiet rebalancing, focusing on regional architecture, Iranian containment, and economic integration. Yet this architecture cannot stand on shaky moral ground.
A superpower is not measured solely by its deterrence capabilities but by the order it creates in its shadow. That means acting when minorities, especially long-standing partners like the Druze, face extermination.
A litmus test of Israeli doctrine
The violence in Sweida is not a unique eruptive event. It signals what happens in the filling of power vacuums by tribal militias and jihadist factions. With Bashar al-Assad taken down by Ahmad al-Sharaa (a former Hayʼat Tahrir al-Sham member linked with al-Qaeda), the fragile patchwork of Syria is fast unraveling.
While ceasefire deals are being sorted out, some Druze leaders have already refused to accept them due to claims of ongoing extremist presence and the state’s unreliability.
Israeli airstrikes, thus, created a historic rupture. For the first time, Israel is deciding not just to defend itself but to defend others. This is no mere game of realpolitik. Arguably, it may be realism tinged with idealism: strategic buffer zones, yes, but also a feeling of moral continuity from Israel’s own saga of persecution and survival.
To call the Druze “interesting assets” as has been chillingly phrased at times is to miss the point entirely; they are Israel’s partners in military service, history, and values. The Israeli-Druze alliance is about something greater than mutual benefit; it is existential.
Letting Sweida collapse into tribal warfare would threaten Israeli borders. But furthermore, it would also offer an insult to the very concept of a postwar regional order. Even worse, this would be a betrayal of the values upon which Jewish statecraft was built since independence: security, solidarity, and a furious defense of human dignity.
The dawn of a Pax Israeliana
What we are witnessing may be the first chapter of a Pax Israeliana, a regional order not imposed by conquest, but secured by principled strength. Israel now has the power to shape its surroundings. The question is whether it has the resolve to do so wisely.
That will mean resisting the temptation to retreat inward. It will mean acting when others flinch. It will mean defending not just Israelis, but the architecture of coexistence, buffer alliances, and moral leadership that will determine whether this new Middle East thrives or tears itself apart.
The Druze of Sweida are the first test. We must not fail it.
Israel has an opportunity to forge a new strategic and moral identity, one that does not choose between realism and values, but binds them into a new doctrine of regional leadership. The crossroads lies ahead. Let Israel continue to choose principled leadership. Let it begin in Sweida, not just because it is possible, but because it is right.
The writer is a specialist in public policy, information warfare, and influence strategy. He studied political science at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and homeland security & cybersecurity at IDC Herzliya.