Armed men gesture as a car burns amid clashes between Druze and Bedouin groups, Suwayda, Syria, July 14, 2025 (Getty)
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The Washington Post has added details about Israel’s operations to undermine the Syrian Government that replaced the Assad regime in December 2024.
The Israelis have been trying to destabilize Suwayda Province in southern Syria, supporting a Druze militia under Hikmat Salman al-Hijri against both Druze rivals and Bedouins.
Israeli attacks and provision of weapons have stirred up clashes among Druze, Bedouin, and Government forces in which more than 1000 people have been killed, including civilians.
The operations have accompanied an expansion of Israeli-occupied territory and periodic airstrikes in Damascus Province, including near the Syria capital.
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Israeli helicopters began arriving in Suwayda on December 17, 2024, nine days after the fall of the Assad regime. Alongside pallets of humanitarian aid were 500 rifles, ammunition, and body armor for the Druze “Military Council”, according to “two former Israeli officials directly involved in the effort”.
Before Assad’s collapse, Druze leaders in Israel sought out a Syrian counterpart who could help lead the 700,000 Druze in the country. They approached Tareq al-Shoufi, a former colonel in Assad’s army. Meanwhile, Israel had identified “20 men with military experience, dishing out ranks and tasks”, said a former Israeli official. Druze members funneled the militia $24,000 through the Syrian Democratic Forces, the US-supported, Kurdish-led militia. Up to $500,000 was separately sent by the SDF to the Military Council, and the Kurdish faction trained Syrian Druze, including women, in their areas in northeast Syria.
Hijri, the spiritual leader, prepared maps of a proposed future Druze state stretching all the way to Iraq and pitched it to at least one major Western government in early 2025.
The flow of weapons peaked in April after clashes between the Druze militia and armed groups aligned with the Government. It was halted in August, as Israel negotiated with Damascus and doubted the reliability of their Druze ally.
However, Israel is continuing airdrops of non-lethal military equipment such as body armor and medical supplies. The Israelis are also providing monthly payments between $100 to $200 to around 3,000 Druze militiamen, said two Druze officials.
A Reduction in Tensions
Just before meeting Donald Trump in the White House last month, Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa told the Post that Israel’s support for separatist movements was driven by its “expansionist ambitions”. He warned this risked igniting “broad wars in the region, because such expansion will create a threat to Jordan, Iraq, Turkey and the Gulf States”.
The President said Israel and Syria have “gone a good distance on the way to reach a [de-escalation] agreement,” hoping Israel will withdraw troops from territories it seized earlier this year and “not give space to parties or actors that don’t want Syria to be stable”.
Israeli officials claim that while they still distrust Sharaa, they are showing pragmatism by circumscribing support for the Druze Military Council. Discussions to turn the Council into an Israeli-armed proxy militia have been shelved amid concerns about in-fighting among Syrian Druze leaders and the risk of entanglement in the country.
An Israeli official summarized:
We were helping when it was absolutely necessary and are committed to minorities’ security, but it is not as if we are going to have commandos take positions next to the Druze or get in the business of organizing proxies.
We are trying to see how things develop there, and it’s no secret that the American administration is very much in favor of a deal.
