By Ali Sawafta and Mustafa Abu Ganeyeh
JULIS, Israel (Reuters) – The head of the Druze community in Israel on Thursday hailed plans for the first visit by a Druze religious delegation from Syria in five decades, despite escalating cross-border tensions underscored by an Israeli airstrike on Damascus.
The Druze, an Arab minority who practise a religion originally derived from Islam, live in Lebanon, Syria, Israel and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, occupying a distinctive position in the region’s mosaic of faiths and cultures.
Sheikh Mowafaq Tarif said the visit by around 100 Syrian Druze religious elders on Friday would be the first to Israel in some 50 years, when a group came in the immediate aftermath of the 1973 Yom Kippur war between Israel, Syria and Egypt.
“All the Druze sect considers tomorrow an historic, festive day after a decades-long absence,” he told Reuters at his home in Julis in northern Israel.
The religious elders, mostly from a string of Druze villages on the slope of Mount Hermon in Syria, are expected to visit shrines including sites held to be the tomb of prophet Shuayb, west of Tiberias, in the Lower Galilee.
Friday’s visit, which has not been officially confirmed, offers a further sign of Israel’s efforts to show its support for Syria’s Druze minority even as its suspicion of the new Islamist government in Damascus becomes increasingly evident.
Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said this week that Druze workers from Syria would be allowed into Israel, in a move that would offer a limited opening in the border for the first time since before the Syrian civil war.
Israel has also sent humanitarian aid to Druze communities in Syria.
TENSIONS WITH DAMASCUS
Underlining the tensions with Damascus, Israeli jets struck targets in the Syrian capital on Thursday that the Israeli military described as a command centre for the Iran-backed Islamic Jihad movement.
Israeli ministers have expressed deep mistrust of the new Syrian government of President Ahmed al-Sharaa, describing his Hayat Tahrir al-Sham movement as a jihadist group. The group was formerly affiliated with Al Qaeda but later renounced any link.
Israel has moved troops into a number of positions in Syrian territory and warned that it would not accept Syrian troops south of Damascus. Following increased sectarian violence in Syria, Israel has even said it would be willing to defend the Druze communities in that country if they were attacked.
However Tarif said he did not believe it would be necessary for Israel to intervene to defend the Druze in Syria.
“The members of the Druze sect in Syria are Syrians and they are proud and I do not believe there is any need for protection,” he said.
Tarif said he hoped the new Syrian government would bring in minorities including Druze, Christians, Kurds, Bedouins, Yazidis and Alawites, “so that Syria will be for all its people and inhabitants”.
“This is what we hope and wish for, we pray to God daily to achieve peace and to see the signs of peace over Lebanon, Syria, Israel, the whole region and the whole world,” he said.
(Additional reporting by Suleiman Al-Khalidi in Amman, writing by James Mackenzie; Editing by Gareth Jones)
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