A recent conference of Druze leaders in Amman, at which participants called on the Israeli Druze community to dodge military service, highlighted the Islamic sect’s small but occasionally pivotal role in local and regional politics, as well as aspirations for a unified front.
The Druze community, more than one million strong, is centered near its roots in Israel, Syria and Lebanon. In all three countries, recent decades of strife have occasionally allowed the sect to weigh in with influence far exceeding its numbers.
Warfare and struggles are far from unfamiliar to the Druze, whose sect of Islam arose in the 11th century from a cult of deification of the caliph Hakim of Egypt. The secretive Druze religion evolved into a monotheistic faith emphasizing inner and hidden layers of meaning, in the spirit of the neo- Platonic philosophy that was very influential at the time when the religion was born.
Their nonconformist beliefs left the Druze subject to intense persecution that forced them out of Egypt and into southern Lebanon, in the area where present-day Lebanon, Syria, and Israel meet.
Many later moved north, where the present-day Mount Lebanon came to be called the Druze Mountain, and to the Houran region in southwestern Syria, where the Druze arrived in the 18th century due to fratricidal civil wars in Lebanon.
Today, by some counts, there are approximately 600,000 Druze in Syria and 300,000 in Lebanon, as well as tens of thousands in Israel. There is also a Druze minority in Jordan, mainly in Al Azraq in the north east of the kingdom.
Israel’s Druze community today numbers approximately 85,000, about 1.8 percent of the total population of Israel and about 10 percent of the country's minority population, making it a significant player in the strife-wracked state. It is all the more pivotal because of the large numbers Druze who, in contrast with the rebelling Palestinian population, serve in the Israeli army.
Because the Druze are seen as more of a model minority, they are courted by Israeli authorities. Meanwhile, on the other side of the border, the Druze leaders who gathered in Amman last week attempted to counter just that courtship.
Just as Israel’s internal struggles have led to the Druze being courted in the Jewish state, endless civil wars in Lebanon have made the Druze very influential in that country.
Observers say the Lebanese Druzes’ honed military skills grew from the need to defend themselves against persecution by their neighbors as well as by the authorities.
Most recently, the Druze were at the center of the storm once more, when the Lebanese government cracked down on Christian activists opposed to Syria’s strong troop presence in their country.
The Syrian-backed Beirut government was apparently disturbed by the recent reconciliation between the Druze and Cardinal Nasrallah Sfeir, who last month became the first Christian Maronite leader to visit Lebanon’s Druze area in 200 years.
The visit was described as historic, in light of the deeply rooted enmity between the Lebanese Christians and Druze dating back to the country’s civil war and beyond. However, the crowd’s shouts of “Syria out!” reflected the two communities’ common ground at present.
"I would like to know who runs this country, the intelligence services or the head of state and the government," said Walid Jumblatt, a key Druze leader and one of the most vocal foes of Syria's military presence in Lebanon, said of the recent arrests.
Jumblatt, a former Syrian ally who moved into the opposition camp in November 2000, was referring to the fact that the wave of arrests seemed to have been carried out without top approval.
The Druze in Syria proper, meanwhile, have yet to regain the pinnacle of power that they fell from during the tenure of the late president Hafaz Al Assad.
Their prowess on the battlefield had allowed them to reach high military ranks, including chief of staff. Despite these accomplishments, the Syrian military establishment subsequently became dominated by the Muslim Alawi sect, who purged much of the Druze officer corps after the defeat in the Six Day War with Israel.
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
