Illustrative:
Druze march in support of Syrian President Bashar Assad in the town of
Majdal Shams on the Golan Heights. (Tsafrir Abayov/Flash90/File)
The fifth year of Syria’s brutal
civil war has marked a sharp increase in the number of Druze residents
on the Golan Heights seeking Israeli citizenship.
In
contrast to the only two requests filed in 2010, the number of Golan
Druze seeking citizenship rose to 80 so far in 2015, Channel 1 reported
on Thursday.
Citing government statistics, the television
report said that some 151 Druze have become naturalized Israeli citizens
since the bloody war broke out in Syria in 2011.
According to the report, the majority of the
applications have been filed by Druze youths, whose connection to Syria
has likely been marred by the violence there.
The Druze have openly sworn allegiance to
Syria ever since Israel captured the Golan Heights in the 1967 Six Day
War. Many have maintained strong economic, familial and emotional ties
with Syria and have remained outwardly loyal to its embattled president,
Bashar Assad.
Of the 20,000 Druze residing in the Golan,
only a few hundred have accepted Israeli citizenship since it was first
offered in 1981.
At the time, Druze leaders declared that
anyone who accepted an Israeli passport and cooperated with the “Zionist
enemy” would pay the price of religious and social ostracism by
exclusion from community life.
Yet, the Druze, members of a mystic sect that
broke away from Shiite Islam in the 11th century, are ideologically
loyal to the countries in which they reside. Israel’s Druze speak Hebrew
and many of the community’s members in the Galilee region serve in the
Israel Defense Forces.
The marked increase in applications could be
an indication that the community’s 45-year-long loyalty to its Syrian
homeland has become fractured by the raging war across the border.
In addition to disillusioned youth, some Golan
Heights Druze are embracing Israeli citizenship out of a fear of
widespread persecution in Syria if Assad’s regime — a government that
protected the minority group — falls, or is forced out of power.
Druze are considered heretical to Sunni Islam,
and have been targeted by the radical al-Nusra Front and Islamic State
terrorist groups in recent years in Syria and Turkey.
Members of the Druze community confirmed to
the television station the phenomenon was on the rise. But, fearing
retaliation in their villages, nobody interviewed for the segment would
speak on-camera.
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