Violence continues a number of weeks after clashes began between armed Bedouin clans, Sunni jihadist teams and Druze combatants on July 14, 2025, in Sweida, a town in southern Syria.
Loads of Druze had been killed within the clashes, and Syria’s protection minister deployed forces to include the sectarian preventing.
The Druze are a spiritual minority within the Levant, the area protecting kind of modern day Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel and Palestinian territories. The religion originated in Egypt as an offshoot of the Fatimid custom, a department of Shiite Islam. As of late, there are about 1 million to at least one.5 million Druze international, greater than part of whom are living in Syria. Maximum others are living in Lebanon, Israel, Jordan and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
We’re professionals in Druze and Lebanese historical past, and we all know that the battle in Sweida is looked through the Druze of Lebanon – and the Druze all over – as a deeply non-public topic.
What’s extra, the horror tales popping out of Sweida are reverberating in Lebanon, the place many Druze additionally concern the danger of sectarian violence, and mistrust in present management.
Bonds cast via an extended historical past
Many students characteristic the sturdy bond between the Druze of Syria and Lebanon to their shared religion – which is in part true – however they frequently put out of your mind an similarly essential part: a collective moral sense formed through a particular foundation tale.
The Druze see themselves as an historical, blood-related tribal coalition that developed into a longer circle of relatives unfold throughout areas. This self-perception is so deeply rooted that it gave upward push to a well known Levantine pronouncing: “The Druze are like a copper plate – wherever you strike it, it rings.”
In line with native custom, a number of Druze households from Mount Lebanon migrated to the Hawran area, south of Damascus, greater than 3 centuries in the past, paving the best way for 1000’s of others to practice. Sweida is the capital town of the Druze area in Ḥawran. The area of Ḥawran is the second-youngest Druze agreement – after Jordan – courting again to the 18th century.
A foundational match locally’s trendy historical past was once the Druze rebellion in Ḥawran towards the Ottoman governor of Egypt, Muhammad Ali Pasha, in 1837.
The governor had insisted on enforcing conscription and disarmament at the Druze. The group rebelled since each measures would put their safety and autonomy in danger, and the governor despatched the military to occupy the Levant.
Right through the rebellion, Druze from Mount Lebanon and Wadi al-Taym – a historic Druze area encompassing the modern day Lebanese districts of Rashayya and Hasbayya within the southeast, close to the Syrian border – rose as much as divert the Egyptian military and despatched combatants to enhance their Syrian family.
In 1838, many of those Lebanese combatants had been killed, specifically in what’s referred to as the Combat of Wadi Bakka, close to the Lebanese-Syrian border; a complete Druze battalion was once besieged through the Egyptian forces and just about burnt up.
In 1860, a 3rd civil conflict involving the Druze below the Ottomans broke out in Mount Lebanon between the Druze and the Maronites. The Maronites are a gaggle of Japanese Catholic Christians predominantly in Lebanon. The battle targeted on regulate of the southern areas of the mountain – traditionally referred to as the Druze Nation.
As violence escalated between the 2 communities, the Druze of Ḥawran got here to assistance from their fellow Druze in Mount Lebanon, tipping the steadiness of their choose.
Right through Global Struggle I, Mount Lebanon was once hit through a famine and round 200,000 folks died. The Druze of Ḥawran supported the Druze in Lebanon through supplying them with crucial grain, and lots of Lebanese Druze resettled in Ḥawran to flee hunger.
Those are only some examples from an extended historical past of mutual enhance that, within the Druze collective reminiscence, reinforces the realization that they don’t seem to be simply a group – however a tightly knit prolonged circle of relatives that spans nationwide borders.
Moving borders
As a spiritual minority within the Levant, the Druze have lengthy defended their non secular freedom and identification.
The principalities in Mount Lebanon had been maximum a hit at figuring out and conserving non secular autonomy from no less than the twelfth century to the nineteenth century; they ensured the Druze had been dominated through considered one of their very own emirs and may just apply their non secular and social customs freely. The fashionable state of Lebanon developed out of those self sustaining principalities.
On the other hand, the Druze by no means considered their combat for social and spiritual autonomy as a license to assault their neighbors – particularly fellow Arab Muslims – however relatively as a safeguard for his or her religion and safety.
The Druze don’t equate non secular freedom and autonomy with independence. In reality, many Druze within the area oppose the speculation of a Druze state.
Beginning within the Nineteen Thirties, Zionist leaders hoping to create a Jewish state sought to milk this Druze need towards autonomy through proposing the advent of a Druze state in Ḥawran. They envisioned it as a pleasant buffer state bordering the longer term state of Israel. Extra importantly, they sought after to push Druze out of Galilee and Mount Carmel figuring out that they lived there for lots of centuries.
After the Six-Day Struggle in 1967 between Israel and Egypt, Jordan and Syria, this concept expanded right into a broader Israeli plan to fragment Syria and Lebanon into 5 sectarian states: an Alawite state within the north, a Christian state within the west, a Druze state within the south, a Kurdish state within the east and a Sunni state on the middle.
Since Oct. 7, 2023, some Druze leaders – corresponding to Walid Jumblatt, former minister, and head of the Innovative Socialist Birthday celebration – have raised considerations that Israel might be making an attempt to restore this plan to reshape the area right into a “New Middle East” with probably new borders in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and the Palestinian territories. In reality, because the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, Jumblatt has been vocal about the upward push of possible new borders.
Traditionally, the best possible Druze non secular government hardly ever have interaction in day by day politics. But, they’re nonetheless anticipated to provide ethical and political steering all through instances of disaster, because the group sees them as guardians of religion, identification and ethics.
Druze clerics participate in a meeting of minority non secular leaders in Beirut on July 18, 2025.
AP Picture/Bilal Hussein
Just lately, the main Druze religious authority in Lebanon, Sheikh Amin al-Sayegh – who has been at odds with Jumblatt on interior communal affairs – voiced equivalent considerations in a public letter of condolence and enhance to the Syrian Druze. He emphasised the group’s Arab Islamic identification and warned towards prioritizing subject material safety over the historic Druze identification. Al-Sayegh’s stance displays long-standing Druze political ideas rooted in centuries of custom.
The political message was once obviously hinting at a emerging tendency amongst some Druze, together with Syrians, to imagine more potent ties with Israel for safety functions.
Rising concern of sectarian violence
Lebanon has an extended historical past of sectarian violence, and the hot occasions in Syria are certainly alarming to Lebanon’s non secular minorities, together with the Druze.
In March 2025, over 1,400 Alawite civilians had been massacred, most commonly in coastal towns like Latakia and Baniyas, through the newly shaped Syrian forces.
In June, 25 Syrian civilians had been killed and over 60 injured when a Sunni extremist workforce attacked the Greek Orthodox Church of the Prophet Elias in Damascus. And as of mid-July, Bedouin clans and the state safety forces of the Sharaa regime were concentrated on and killing Druze civilians in Sweida.
With a large number of Bedouin tribes found in Lebanon, and rigidity evolving into an open sectarian war of words, Druze leaders there concern that the sectarian violence may just spill over into their very own communities because of the Syrian Bedouins’ name for basic mobilization of Arab tribes within the area towards the Druze. This name is according to unverified experiences of Druze killing Bedouin civilians.
Druze management in Lebanon
Regardless of rising frustration over Lebanon’s deepening financial disaster – in part attributed to political management – maximum Lebanese Druze remained dependable to standard figures like Jumblatt, who was once lengthy considered as essentially the most succesful father or mother in their safety and communal pursuits.
However the surprise of latest violence in Sweida, the place militias aligned with the Syrian regime centered Druze civilians, has unsettled that loyalty. Many Lebanese Druze had anticipated their leaders to make use of their exterior affect to protect their family around the border. The perceived failure to take action – mixed with Jumblatt’s endured enhance for the regime led through President Ahmed al-Sharaa in Syria – has sparked in style complaint throughout the group. Jumblatt himself stated this sturdy complaint in a contemporary interview.
For lots of Druze, the brutal occasions in Sweida had been fiercely aggravating and feature pressured them to painfully confront their long-standing core political priorities: safety and the preservation of spiritual and social autonomy. And in mild of this, some are starting to think again long-held assumptions that present management can maintain their non secular autonomy and, extra importantly, stay them protected.
