Israel promotes sectarianism and advocates for the partition of Syria

3 min read EUGENIO GARCIA GASCON 0 comments

EUGENIO GARCIA GASCON

The civil war that began more than a decade ago has left Syria bled dry and on the brink of collapse, with a president, Ahmed Sharaa, who claims to lead his people toward democracy, an uncertain transition given the perceived divisions within its borders and continued foreign interference.

The volatility of the situation became evident in early May after an audio recording attributed to a Druze cleric circulated in which the Prophet Muhammad was insulted. Tempers quickly escalated, and in the town of Yarmana, a predominantly Druze suburb south of Damascus, around ten people were killed, mostly Druze, but also two police officers.

The incidents between Sunnis and Druze spread to other areas, and within hours the death toll rose to several dozen, most of them Druze. At this point, Israel intervened, deploying troops in southern Syria to "defend" the Druze.

Just hours earlier, Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a nationalist and religious politician allied with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, declared that Israel would continue bombing Gaza until "hundreds of thousands" of Palestinians left the Strip, and would continue operating in Syria until the country was "partitioned."

The Druze are a religious sect that originated in the Middle Ages and today lives as a minority in Syria, Lebanon, and Israel. In Israel, the Druze minority is relatively integrated, to the point that its adherents, unlike Sunni Arabs, are drafted into the army. However, there is a group of Israeli Druze who are pan-Arabists and critical of Zionism.

Immediately after the 1967 war, some Israeli leaders floated the idea of creating a Druze state in Syria and Lebanon, a state that would be a client of Israel and serve as a deterrent to the Arabs, serving the Zionist forces. In reality, this idea was not new, as it had already been considered by other Zionist leaders, such as Yigal Allon in 1942, well before the creation of the Jewish state in 1948.

Well, in recent days we've seen the resurgence of this idea. A portion of the Druze community in Israel, though not all, has taken to the streets to demand that the Israeli Army, of which they are a part, intervene to "save" the Druze in Syria. This is a reckless idea that has been embraced, to a certain extent for now, by the Netanyahu government.

This explains the deployment of Israeli troops in southern Syria and the air strikes that have caused several deaths in just a few days. Israeli air forces even bombed an outbuilding adjacent to the Damascus palace where President Ahmed Sharaa resides, a strike Netanyahu called a "warning" against excessive attacks on the Druze.

Shortly after, Sharaa received Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblat at the same palace, who denounced those sowing discord in Syria, in a clear allusion to Netanyahu.

It should not be forgotten that a large portion of Syrian Druze supported President Bashar al-Assad's Ba'ath Party for decades. These Druze are enemies of Israel, which relies on another portion of the Druze, who are enemies of President Sharaa, and aspire to form their own state similar to the one Israel desires.

With the fall of al-Assad in December, a kind of floodgates were opened, which Israel is exploiting with the various minorities—Druze, Kurds, and even Alawites—fomenting sectarianism and nationalism among these groups in order to achieve the partition of Syria, a goal acknowledged by Minister Smotrich.

Behind these movements lies the struggle between Netanyahu and Turkish President Recept Tayyip Erdogan for regional hegemony. Both leaders desire control over Syria, but while the latter seeks the continuation of the so-called political Islam that Sharaa advocates in a united Syria, the former wants a weak, divided, and unstructured Syria that is truly loyal to the Zionist state.