After Syria war, Druze in Golan Heights warm to Israel

MAJDAL SHAMS: For many Druze in the Golan Heights, participating in an Israeli election used to be done in secret, but when Israel holds national polls next week, Fadi Damaqsi will be casting his ballot proudly.

“It’s crucial for all Israeli citizens to vote,” said Damaqsi, from the Golan Heights town of Ein Qiniye. “It’s a right, but it’s also an honor.”

The Golan’s 26,000 Druze have historically rejected outward displays of allegiance to Israel, which captured the territory from Syria in 1967 and annexed it in 1981, with those who adopt the nationality ostracized.

But a shift in attitudes has picked up after Israel carried out military strikes in Syria in 2025. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu justified the attack by saying Israel was protecting Syria’s Druze.

Outside the Golan Heights, the Druze, a group spanning across borders who practice a heterodox offshoot of Islam, are highly integrated in Israel and are the only Arabic-speaking people required to serve in the military.

The situation has historically been different in the Golan.

Nearly all Druze from the territory, whose annexation has only been recognized by the United States and, recently, Colombia, have family in Syria, leading initially to a “social and religious boycott” of Israel, political expert Salim Brik said.

Today, some 45 percent of Druze in the Golan Heights hold Israeli nationality, compared with just two percent 40 years ago, according to the interior ministry, with the trend picking up sharply since the Syria intervention.

In Majdal Shams, the Golan’s main Druze city with 12,000 people, requests for citizenship soared in 2025 with 3,750 applications, against 570 the previous year, interior ministry figures show.

A number of Golan Druze interviewed by AFP traced their turning point to Israel’s 2025 intervention in Syria’s predominantly Druze province of Sweida.

The region had been torn by sectarian fighting, months after the fall of Syria’s Assad family which had ruled the country with an iron fist for more than half a century.

More than 1,700 people died in clashes between the Druze and Bedouin tribes backed by Sunni militants who had formerly fought alongside Syria’s new president, Ahmed Al-Sharaa.

Israel said it intervened to stop a massacre of the Druze but Sharaa had publicly called for communal peace and accused Israel of seeking to destabilize Syria.

Some outside analysts also believe Israel was strategically seeking a pretext to strike military infrastructure and weaken its historic adversary.

Whatever the geopolitical context, the intervention pleased many Druze in the Golan Heights.

Israel acted “when the entire world was sitting around with their hands crossed,” said Ein Qiniye’s mayor, Wael Mugrabi.

The Israeli strikes provoked “a major shift in loyalty and a feeling of belonging” by many Druze in the Golan, Mugrabi said.

Mugrabi himself is an example. He will become the first candidate ever from the Golan Heights to run in Israel’s legislative elections.

In early October, he inaugurated a new school in the town named after Major Jamal Abbas, a Druze soldier who died fighting for Israel in Gaza in 2024.

Facing the verdant fir trees of Mount Hermon, the school bore the five-colored Druze flag alongside Israel’s — a scene that would have been unthinkable even a few years earlier.

A year before the Syria intervention, another event had already triggered a change in Druze attitudes.

In July 2024, a missile landed on a football pitch in Majdal Shams, killing 12 children.

Israel blamed the strike on Hezbollah, which denied responsibility.

Remembrances for the children are omnipresent in the city, with the field now a memorial site and a symbolic 12 golden arrows circling the main roundabout.

Laith Abu Saleh, who lost his son Fajr, remains deeply affected by the weak response to the strike by Syria, which under Assad was allied with Hezbollah.

“No one sent condolences,” he said. “Not even a short message.”

For him, the Golan’s Druze “are seeking citizenship not to influence the elections” but “out of a desire to belong” in Israel.

The sentiment is not universal. In a barbershop, a group of young men seemed embarrassed when asked about their loyalties. One of them laughed and said he was still boycotting Israel.

Another confided that he was “afraid of being called up for military service” if he took Israeli nationality.

But such views are becoming fewer. Polling stations have been set up in the heart of Golan towns, whereas once Druze who wanted to vote would go discreetly to nearby Jewish areas.

According to Brik, the shift is also generational, with 91 percent of people of the Golan Heights born after Israel captured it from Syria.

“No one is any longer expecting Israel to give back the Golan,” he said.