Druze sovereignty in Syria is in America’s and Israel’s best interest

The pro-West Druze of southern Syria have all but declared independence from the new jihadist rulers of the country. They need allies.

Members of Syria’s new authorities security forces at a checkpoint as they deploy in the Druze and Christian majority Jaramana suburb of Damascus on March 2, 2025. Photo by Bakr Alkasem/AFP via Getty Images.

Khalifa Khalifa

Khalifa Khalifa is a Druze public speaker, Middle East policy analyst and media entrepreneur who has served as an adviser to the Israel Defense Forces on Palestinian affairs.

Brett Kaufman

Brett Kaufman is assistant professor of the Classics at University of Illinois, and co-founder of Faculty for Academic Freedom and Against Antisemitism.

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(March 11, 2025 / JNS)

The astonishing events of the past several weeks in Syria represent a once-in-an-era opportunity for the free world to remake the Middle East into an anti-jihadist alliance—if Western leadership seizes the opportunity. Druze militias in southern Syria announced unification under a new “military council of Sweida,” which prompted other armed Druze groups to join as well. The announcement was almost certainly made in coordination with Israel, which quickly backed the Druze alliance in words and actions.

In response, Syria’s new Al-Qaeda-trained leadership sent troops to attack the Druze in the Damascus suburb of Jaramana, where they were repelled. These are the first shots in a Druze war of independence. However, the Druze are currently ill-equipped to preserve their autonomy. They now openly risk the wrath of the Islamist coalition more than ever.

The Druze’s need for allies represents one of the best chances for the Trump administration to forge a new Middle Eastern reality without committing troops. The Druze, being neither Muslim, Christian nor Jewish, receive no Islamic protection as dhimmi (second-class citizens) in Syria. Considered heretical to Islam, Muslims have persecuted the Druze as infidels for centuries.

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The Druze are Arabs who split off from Islam about a thousand years ago to form their own religion, incorporating prophets such as Aristotle and Jesus Christ. Major rites of the Druze faith are mysteries, forbidden to outsiders. Their people are spread across Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Israel, and have no autonomy of their own. At best, they have uneasy relationships with their host countries until the formation of Israel.

In Israel, the Druze have been embraced as allies and full citizens, serving in the highest positions in the Israel Defense Forces and government. The integration of the Druze of Israel is a testament to the Western liberal pluralism of Israeli society that jihadists and their allies on American and European college campuses are loath to acknowledge.

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The Druze homeland of Jabal al-Druze (“Druze Mountain”) lies in territory within the Sweida, Quneitra and Daraa governates of the Hauran region, its borders strategically hemming in Damascus. With recent IDF defensive incursions in Syria, these lands are now conjoined with Israel and Jordan. While some Druze in the Golan on the Syria-Israel border sided with the Iranian-backed Bashar Assad regime out of fear of being dubbed Zionist collaborators, the majority of Syrian Druze are avowedly pro-Israel and have resisted Islamist attacks for years.

Why are the Druze pro-Western? Not only do their values align but as apostates to Islam, they have no choice. With Assad’s blessing, Islamic State terrorists attacked Sweida on July 25, 2018, taking dozens of women and children hostage, and beheading all the captured men and a teenage girl. More than 250 Druze were slaughtered in the attack.

Syria is now being run by Ahmed al-Sharaa (aka Abu Mohammad al-Julani), an Al-Qaeda terrorist who has rebranded himself to trick the West into accepting his rule over all of Syria. While he has publicly disavowed global jihad in favor of jihad in Syria alone, this is most likely taqiya, an act of concealment, to win international support from a Western world desperate for stability and non-escalation.

How can we be sure? Since taking Damascus, Julani forced a woman to don a hijab to appear next to him. Julani and his Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group plan to force Muslim women to veil and bar them from serving in government. His fighters lit a Christmas tree on fire. Before coming to international prominence, in 2015, HTS members massacred the Druze of Idlib, expelled Christians and then rented out their apartments.

After decades and centuries of stale Islamist and Ba’athist domination, the Druze are ready for a change. In Quneitra, Druze villages like Hader near the border even called on Israel to annex them. Though the call for annexation came as a political maneuver to ask Israel for help, it was a sign of how desperate the Syrian Druze are in the face of active Islamist persecution and how genuine they are in their Western leanings.

Sweida is deeper into Syrian territory. Public voices there are increasingly asking for “normalization” with Israel, to receive Israeli attention and aid. This call for Israeli collaboration is, on its own, a sea change in Middle Eastern politics.

Predictably, the world is outraged over Israeli self-defense incursions into the failed state of Syria while ignoring Turkish seizures in the north. It is in the north of Syria that Julani has demanded the American-backed Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces hand over their weapons, clearly under pressure from his benefactor, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The ideal Western response would be to grant autonomy to the Kurds, which, unfortunately, is a hard sell for NATO because of Turkish belligerence. (Turkey has been a NATO member since the early 1950s.)

A much easier first path is to support allies like the Druze in southern Syria, projecting U.S. power contiguously from the Red Sea to the gates of Damascus. This would also help the Kurds hold the line against Erdogan’s neo-Ottoman Empire by creating another front for Julani’s Turkish-backed forces to deal with.

Here, then, are actions in Syria the Trump administration can take immediately:

• Recognize Druze autonomy and the fundamental right of its people to sovereignty.
• Publicly state that Islamists need to keep their hands off of pro-Western, persecuted minorities of Syria, including the Druze, Kurds and Christians. These minority groups must not be forced to disarm, and a resurrected Syrian national army must stay out of their homelands.
• Fund and arm the Druze without committing American troops on the ground. Israel can facilitate the transfer of aid and training. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has demanded that Julani’s jihadist army stay out of southern Syria, and U.S. President Donald Trump can voice his support as well.
• Israel must not be pressured to withdraw from territory it has seized in southern Syria, which connects the Druze of Sweida, Quneitra and Daraa to Israel and Jordan. This provides a pro-American power bloc straight to the Damascus border. The Druze and Israel can decide how best to secure their own borders against Julani, Erdoğan and Hezbollah.

The Druze will remain second-class citizens under Arab or Muslim rule. Supporting an autonomous Druze zone—populated by ideologically motivated anti-jihadists who want to fight for their own freedom and keep Syrian, Turkish and Lebanese Islamist autocrats in check—is greatly in the American interest.

Many Americans have an aversion to foreign entanglement that will wind up with U.S. boots on the ground. Yet they understand that when America retreats, the bad guys take over. These Americans are the ones who support Israel, which is holding the front line of the free world. Let this model of good ally snowball onward to other Middle Eastern peoples who value liberty. Let the Druze be free.

The opinions and facts presented in this article are those of the author, and neither JNS nor its partners assume any responsibility for them.