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JULIS, Israel — Nestled in a quiet corner of a quaint village in Israel’s north, the building appears, at the outset, to house an elegant meeting salon with giant chandeliers, ornate but uncomfortable chairs and trays of sweets.
But past an improvised divider made of plywood and a stern attendant who places stickers over smartphone cameras, sits a team of volunteers working amid large screens and laptops: The nerve center of an all-hands-on-deck humanitarian operation to aid the Druze religious minority in Syria.
Druze in Israel have long sent donations to their coreligionists in the southwestern Syrian province of Sweida, but since July — when around 1,000 Druze civilians were slaughtered in a sectarian killing rampage — a complex aid operation has emerged to serve tens of thousands of people more than 40 miles of hostile territory away.
“What were we supposed to do? Watch them get slaughtered and be silent?” said Muwaffaq Tarif, the spiritual chieftain of the 150,000-strong Druze community in Israel.
Marshaling family ties in Syria and links to Israel’s military and government, the operation headquartered in the salon now provides funds, humanitarian and medical aid, along with logistical and intelligence support — this despite a months-long blockade on Sweida by Syrian forces.
The assistance has become part of a vital lifeline for the province, and has empowered Druze militias and spiritual leaders calling for secession from Syria and an alliance with Israel.
Demonstrators dance with the Druze flag as they gather in front of the Berlin Cathedral to voice solidarity for Druze communities in Syria on Aug. 30 in Berlin.
(Omer Messinger / Getty Images)
The needs are vast. As Tarif sat with volunteers at the salon, his phones racked up calls and messages — the grand majority from Druze in Syria.
“I’m getting 500, 800, sometimes even a thousand people, every day. All need my help. It makes you cry,” Tarif said.
The Druze — a sect that combines elements of Islam and other religious traditions — constitute 1 million people worldwide; some 500,000 live in Syria, or roughly 3% of the population. Hard-line Muslims consider them infidels.
During Syria’s 14-year civil war, the dictatorial President Bashar Assad let them establish their own militias in Sweida and run affairs in the Druze-majority province, so long as they didn’t fight government troops or allow opposition rebels to enter. But they had little love for Assad or the Islamist-dominated opposition.
After Assad’s much-reviled regime fell last December, the new president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, tried to mollify concerns about the new government’s jihadist roots; Al-Sharaa was once an Al Qaeda-affiliated rebel leader but renounced the group years ago.
A poster of Ahmed al-Sharaa, Syria’s interim president, graces a windshield in Damascus as Syrians mark the first anniversary of the fall of the Assad regime.
(John Wreford / LightRocket via Getty Images)
Al-Sharaa promised to protect Syria’s minorities and excise extremists among his allies. That won him support from the U.S., Europe and his Arab neighbors, but Israel took an adversarial stance, occupying swaths of Syria’s south and launching thousands of airstrikes to destroy the fallen government’s arsenal.
Meanwhile, Al-Sharaa urged Druze leadership to dissolve their militias and surrender arms. Some wanted to cooperate, but Syria’s top Druze cleric, Hikmat al-Hijri, refused, saying his groups would disarm only when Al-Sharaa formed an inclusive government.
Syria is home to a diverse collection of religions, and as the new government sought to establish itself, sectarian unrest broke out. In March, government-linked gunmen massacred some 1,500 people, mostly Alawites. In May, clashes erupted in Druze-majority areas near Damascus.
Then came the massacres in Sweida.
They started in early July as tit-for-tat kidnappings between Druze militias and Bedouin tribes but soon devolved into street fighting. The government negotiated a ceasefire and sent security personnel, but rather than restoring order, they joined the Bedouins in a blood-soaked rampage.
They systematically burned and looted some 32 villages, executed civilians, then mutilated their bodies and abused men by cutting off their mustaches, which among Druze are considered a sign of spiritual maturity. And they filmed themselves doing so, proudly posting trophy videos to social media.
Families are evacuated by the United Nations in southern Syria in July after violent clashes between Bedouin fighters and members of the Druze community.
(Bakr Alkasem / AFP via Getty Images)
By the rampage’s end, nearly 200,000 people were forced to flee their homes. More than 100 women and girls were abducted. Dozens remain missing.
Al-Hijri urged President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to save Sweida, adding that “we can no longer coexist with a regime that knows only iron and fire.”
Once word reached Tarif of what happened, he raced to action.
“We called everyone, the [Israeli] army, the government, the prime minister, the defense minister, the chief of staff, to stop the massacres. The Syrian government was entering with tanks, drones, artillery. It was an army versus against civilians with a pistol or rifle,” Tarif said.
Israel, which has made overtures to Syria’s Druze, mobilized. Netanyahu ordered airstrikes on Syrian personnel blitzing through Sweida’s provincial capital, along with the Damascus headquarters of the Syrian army and the presidential palace.
Al-Sharaa accused Israel of fomenting internal divisions and said Al-Hijri’s call for international intervention was unacceptable. He formed a committee to investigate atrocities against the Druze and others, and vowed in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly in September “to bring every hand stained with the blood of innocents to justice.”
Al-Hijri and many Druze previously conciliatory toward Al-Sharaa were unconvinced and demanded to secede.
At the same time, a tense standoff ensued: Syrian government forces surrounded the province, ostensibly to keep Bedouins and Druze separated, though critics accused them of replicating Assad’s surrender-or-starve tactics to force Sweida into submission.
Many among Israel’s Druze wanted to help.
“The world was ignoring what happened, so we have to do this. Our women sold their gold, people sold property, others took loans to raise money,” Tarif said, adding that some $2.5 million was collected.
With no land link between Sweida and areas Israel occupied in southern Syria, the only way to deliver aid was via the Israeli air force. But the amounts proved inadequate. That was the spark for the operations room.
Standing amid an array of workstations, a volunteer explained how his team identified sympathetic individuals to buy medicine and food from Damascus, and middlemen who bribed supplies past government checkpoints into Sweida. They also smuggled in equipment and paid workmen to rehabilitate water and electricity infrastructure. Some convoys entered with the Syrian Red Crescent with Damascus’ knowledge, Tarif said.
“If we use $10,000 here, it’s nothing. But in Syria, they go a long way, and buy plenty of supplies,” the volunteer said.
The center funded converting a judiciary building in Sweida into a displacement center housing 130 families, complete with a workshop where women could sew clothing, including uniforms for Druze militias.
Other volunteers brought their specialties to bear: With Sweida’s medical facilities ravaged, the center managed four hospitals in the province.
Programmers built an app-based humanitarian ecosystem, enabling Sweida residents to register for medical care, while doctors used WhatsApp messages to consult specialists in Israel and elsewhere.
Other programs coordinated aid requests and deliveries, or helped residents document atrocities.
“We took advantage of our skills to defend ourselves,” said one 28-year-old activist with the operations room technical team, taking out his phone to demo some apps. One for medical procedures included drop-down menus and a simple interface he said has been used by thousands.
Some assistance veered into intelligence. Because Sweida was still under threat, the team, some of whose members retired from military service, tracked events on the ground. They deployed bots to monitor posts on social media that could indicate an attack, hacked phones of commanders in the area, and relayed the information to the Israeli military and Druze militias.
Meanwhile, the Israeli military supplied the militias with limited amounts of weapons and ammunition, activists in Sweida say, and maintain drone surveillance over the area.
Members of the Druze community in the Israel-annexed Golan Heights gather for a rally in July to show solidarity with Druze in Syria.
(Jalaa Marey / AFP via Getty Images)
All that has made the Sweida militias more effective. But it has also strengthened Al-Hijri’s plan to secede and ally the province — which is some 60 miles southeast of Damascus — to Israel. In recent speeches, he refers to Sweida as Bashan, its Hebrew biblical name, and forces under his control have raised the Israeli flag along the Druze banner. Last week, Al-Hijri-affiliated forces revealed new uniforms and logos that critics point out incorporate the Star of David in their design.
For his part, Tarif, who says he is in daily contact with Al-Hijri as well as intermediaries to Al-Sharaa, insists “the ball is in Jolani’s court,” employing Al-Sharaa’s nom de guerre.
“Do this tomorrow. Open an international humanitarian corridor to Sweida. Bring people back to their homes. Return the kidnapped. Simple,” Tarif said.
At the same time, local opposition to Al-Hijri is intensifying after his forces tortured and killed two Druze clerics he accused of “treason” for contacting state authorities.
“He’s gathering thugs around him, silencing any voice seeking a solution with the state,” said one activist in Sweida who refused to be named for fear of reprisals. Many in Sweida feel trapped between Al-Hijri and a government in Damascus they’ve learned to fear.
“As a Druze, if I want to stand against Al-Hijri and his gangs, who can I go to?” the activist asked. “The state that committed massacres against my people? How can we trust them?”
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Nabih Bulos
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