Guardians of the Golan: Israel’s Airstrikes and the Druze Dilemma

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The Druze are a small Arabic-speaking ethnoreligious community whose faith branched off from Ismāʿīlī Shiʿism in 11th-century Egypt and evolved into a secretive, monotheistic creed that teaches reincarnation and esoteric wisdom. Numbering around one million worldwide, they live mainly in Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and Jordan, fiercely safeguarding their traditions through closed religious circles. In Syria, roughly 700,000 Druze concentrate in the southern governorate of al-Suwayda and around Damascus. There, local self-defense militias formed when the civil war began, striving to protect their towns from both regime and rebel forces while negotiating occasional truces with Damascus. In Israel, about 150,000 Druze serve in the military under conscription like Jewish citizens, forging a reputation for loyalty that sets them apart from other Arab minorities. This bond underpins Israel’s claim that it must defend Druze across the border in Syria against threats from the Assad regime, Iran, and Hezbollah. Since mid-2025, Israel has carried out precision airstrikes on Syrian military sites and militia convoys in Suwayda and Damascus. Jerusalem says these strikes deter hostile forces from massing near the Golan Heights and protect the cross-border Druze community from kidnapping, shelling, or reprisals in the fractious Syrian south. The campaign underscores Israel’s broader aim of maintaining a buffer zone south of the Golan, limiting Iranian influence in Syria, and signaling to Damascus that any action against Druze or Israeli territory will meet a swift response, keeping the border in uneasy equilibrium.