MENA Minorities

Interview in German with Swiss public radio (SRF) providing some background on the situation of the Druze in the occupied Golan Heights against the backdrop of the tragic rocket attack on Majdal Shams. Last month I was also cited in a piece on Middle East Eye  by Madeline Edwards about Walid Junblat's rhetoric towards Israel's Druze community: ...And though images of Sultan al-Atrash are common among Druze Israelis, Lang said, “I think what triggered Jumblatt was the usage of the pictures of his father. This is quite unusual. Memory is always selective - Kamal Jumblatt can be seen as a symbol of the Lebanese and pro-Palestinian left, and as a Druze leader, too."  But for Druze citizens of Israel, according to Lang, Kamal Jumblatt’s image is “not widely used.” ...

Dieser Artikel erschien leicht gekürzt bei Alsharq im Rahmen einer hochinteressanten Serie anlässlich 50 Jahre Sechstagekrieg. Mit den Golanhöhen eroberte Israel 1967 auch fünf drusische [1] Dörfer. Die unterdessen rund 20 000 Golan-Drusen haben die israelische Staatsbürgerschaft trotz erheblichem Druck mehrheitlich nicht angenommen und leben seit 50 Jahren in einem Provisorium zwischen Syrien und Israel. Sie konnten zwar die israelische Annexion nicht verhindern, dafür aber durchsetzen, die israelische Staatsbürgerschaft nicht annehmen zu müssen. In den 50 Jahren unter israelischer Kontrolle waren die Golan-Drusen stets bedacht, den Kontakt nach Syrien aufrecht zu erhalten und gleichzeitig den eigenen Widerstand gegen die Besatzung zu demonstrieren. Der Bürgerkrieg im Mutterland Syrien ändert nun aber die Situation der Golan-Drusen grundlegend. Vor dem gewonnen Sechstagekrieg 1967 hatten die Golan-Drusen nie einen großen Stellenwert in den strategischen Überlegungen de...

Former Israeli defense and foreign minister Moshe Arens states in his recent column at Haaretz that in Majdal Shams on the occupied Golan:  The Syrian flags are gone and Israeli flags are beginning to appear. Some 30 percent of the Druze residents of Majdal Shams have taken out Israeli citizenship, and the rest of the Druze villages seem to be following suit. I really wonder where Arens gets those numbers from. The most recent numbers I have seen were cited by i24News (thx to  Elizabeth Tsurkov  for the reminder) in February last year. Then the total number of naturalized citizens since 2011 from all four Druze villages on the occupied Golan was 151. Majdal Shams has currently around 8,800 inhabitants according to Wikipedia . Is it realistic that some additional 2,000 (conservatively estimated) have been naturalized over the last year? No. However, Arens might not be so wrong with his overall message, since, in the context of the war in...

Very insightful piece about Samir Quntar and the Golan Druze by Nour Samaha, I am briefly cited as well. Blurred Future by Nour Samaha, Newsweek Middle East (...) Who was Kantar and What Was He Doing in Syria? At the age of 16, Kantar, a Lebanese Druze, was sentenced by an Israeli court to five life terms plus 47 years for his role in a 1979 military operation in the northern Israeli town of Nahariya. He was eventually released in a prisoner exchange deal between Hezbollah and Israel in 2008.  He joined Hezbollah’s ranks soon after. Following the outbreak of the Syrian war in 2011, Kantar was tasked with heading up the Popular Syrian Resistance (PSR), an obscure group that was created in 2013. Backed by the Syrian government, and supervised and equipped by Hezbollah and Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, the PSR’s aim was to recruit local Syrians from the southern Quneitra province, near the Golan Heights. The recruits were tasked with carrying out operations ag...

I'm cited in a report about the Druze in the Israeli occupied Golan Heights featured on Qantara.de, the great online magazine run by Germany's international broadcaster. Squeezed between occupation and civil war   Ylenia Gostoli, Qantara.de (...)Apart from the protest mentioned above, however, most Golanese Druze have distanced themselves from the position of their co-religionists inside Israel. "Over the last decades, the relationships between the Druze in Israel and those in the Golan has been very cold and distant," said Tobias Lang, a political scientist who wrote a book about the Druze minority (...) "The majority of the Druze in Israel serve in the army and accepted a particularistic Israeli-Druze identity, whilst Golani Druze stayed loyal to the motherland." "We don't share most of their demands," said Salman Fakhr Edeen, a resident and researcher at a local human rights NGO. "I myself am against the war. To increase killi...

Last week I was cited by a couple of media about the current situation between Israel and the Syrian Druze (in English, French & German): Syrian Druze plight tests Israel’s policy of avoiding involvement in civil war Sean Savage, Jewish News Service “The Druze in Idlib and in the Golan/Hermon-region are in a very precarious situation and such a possibility [of massacres] exists, especially in Idlib. Here the Druze are totally at the mercy of Nusra, even though they have already twice declared their conversion to Islam,” Tobias Lang, an Austria-based political analyst and author of the book “Die Drusen in Libanon und Israel” (“The Druze in Lebanon and Israel”), told  JNS.org . (...)   “With the recent dynamic [of the] the massacre in Idlib, the growing Islamic State activity in eastern Sweida, the pushing of other rebels towards Sweida from the west, and the siege of the Druze town of Hader [in the Golan Heights], the Israeli Druze started to get involved on a...

The news are allover: The Druze in Syria are said to face an existential crisis. This is of course not fully true but it is undeniable that during the last weeks some extremely worrying developments have occurred: 1. ISIS has increased its activity in the East of Suwaida’. They attacked the village of Huquf on May 15, killing six inhabitants including 18 years old Mariana as-Sman. True or not, on Druze social media massive allegations circulated blaming the regime for allowing ISIS into the province. Later ISIS entered the Lajah area between Suwaida’ and Dar‘a and started to fight against rebel forces. 2. This brings us to the next hot spot, the West of Suwaida’ which is currently penetrated by different rebel groups including Jabhat an-Nusra. Especially around the Thula-airbase a fierce battle is fought. Here Druze militiamen are also involved, who had refused to fight in Dar‘a during rebel-offensive earlier this year. 3. The massacre of 23 Druze villagers by Jabhat an-Nusra...

Jabhat al-Nusra is capturing more hostages in Quinatira west of #Syria , this time Druze according to activists from the region. — Zaid Benjamin (@zaidbenjamin) 2. September 2014 Israel 'cooperating with Assad' in Golan Heights   by Kate Shuttleworth, DW The recent seizure of the Quneitra border crossing by Islamist extremists fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces marked a major escalation in the impact Syria's civil war has had on Israel. Fighters from the Nusra Front, al Qaeda's branch in Syria, expelled Assad's forces from the area and abducted 43 United Nations peacekeepers in the process. That brought the Islamist extremists within yards of Israeli positions, forcing Israel to close their side of Quneitra crossing and order farmers off agricultural land on the border. (...) Israel prepares to accept Syrian refugees Until now Israel has largely refused to accept any Syrians displaced by the civil war, and neighboring countries...