While many Druze in Israel have called on the government to aid their coreligionists in Syria, a number of prominent Syrian Druze have rejected Israeli assistance and urged continued support for the Assad regime. Mordechai Kedar explains a highly complex situation:
[B]ehind the scenes a great drama is taking place, with the added presence of Jordan and the United States, as all those involved know exactly what may be the fate of the Druze when Assad falls. . . . [Yet] the Druze are not sure Assad will indeed fall, and perhaps they still hope the Iranians will invade Syria in order to save Assad and end the rebellion against him. It also stands to reason that the [statement rejecting Israel’s help] does not represent all the Druze, some of whom certainly do not support what it says.
The Druze position is terribly complicated. They are torn between conflicting loyalties, afraid of all the protagonists in the [Syrian civil war] because they are not Muslims and because they are concentrated in three areas that can easily be surrounded and cut off. Willingness to accept aid from Israel will leave them open to the revenge of the [Assad] regime and the jihadists; refusal may leave them unprotected. They do not have a unified leadership capable of presenting a single stand, and it is hard to believe media pronouncements made by one leader or another.
The main goal of the Druze is to survive, as they have for 1,000 years in a hostile Muslim environment, but the question is how they are to go about it and what steps they should take to ensure that survival. The answers offered to those questions contradict one another, and we can only hope that the complex situation of the Druze and the division in their ranks will not lead this remarkable ethnic group to the jihadist knives and slave-markets of Islamic State.
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