When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called upon the Syrian army to withdraw from the nation’s south, using the plight of the Druze minority as an excuse, he did so based upon a decades-old plot to divide the country. After co-opting Druze militia leaders, Israel plans to end the Syrian State as we know it.

“We demand the complete demilitarization of southern Syria in the provinces of Quneitra, Daraa and Suwayda from the forces of the new regime. Likewise, we will not tolerate any threat to the Druze community in southern Syria”, Netanyahu announced on Sunday. His calls were denounced by the new Syrian transitional government’s President, Ahmed al-Shara’a (also known by the nom de guerre Abu Mohammad al-Julani), who also heads Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), formerly Al-Qaeda’s offshoot in Syria.

Within the first twenty-four hours of the former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s ousting, the Israeli military scrapped the 1974 disengagement treaty with Damascus. It proceeded to occupy more Syrian lands while launching its largest-ever air campaign that destroyed the country’s military. In response to this, Syria’s new leadership initially responded by offering Israel an olive branch and even floating the idea of normalization with Tel Aviv.

Instead of responding positively to the rhetoric from Damascus, Israel began developing a plot to exploit the predicament of two Syrian minority groups: the Kurds and the Druze. The two territories where these minority groups live are key to the implementation of a plot aimed at Israel extending its de-facto control east of the Euphrates River.

Following “Operation True Promise,” Iran’s retaliatory ballistic missile and drone attack against Israel following Tel Aviv’s attack on Tehran’s embassy in Damascus, Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant declared that an opportunity had arisen to form a new strategic relationship “against this grave threat by Iran.” Gallant’s words were widely interpreted as a call to establish a joint front with Arab regimes and the Kurdish movements against Iran.

Last November, Israeli foreign minister Gideon Sa’ar made it clear that Tel Aviv’s priority should be to back the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) that control northeastern Syria. Hebrew-language media reports claimed the SDF had officially requested help from Israel. The SDF has long been backed by the United States, acting as a proxy to enable Washington’s control of Syria’s oil fields and fertile agricultural lands.

Less well-known is that Israel has long maintained its own ties to the SDF. Speaking on condition of anonymity, a former senior military official of the previous Syrian government told MintPress News that Israel had transferred military assets – such as drones – into northeastern Syria as early as 2017. The official alleged that the purpose was to launch operations against Iraqi militia groups and Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) forces.

Conversely, the strategy to leverage Druze separatist groups in southwestern Syria was a far more complex operation—one that only began to take shape in earnest by 2020.

Conspiracies Coming To Life

It has been well established that Israel provided direct funding, in addition to medical as well as military support, to at least a dozen Syrian opposition groups from as early on as 2013 with the goal of supporting regime change in Syria. One of those militant groups was the infamously violent HTS, a group led by Syria’s current president, Ahmed al-Shara’a. At the time, there was little mention in the press of Israel’s recruitment of agents within the Druze community.

The Druze population is spread primarily across southern Syria, Lebanon, and northern occupied Palestine, with each community following a distinct historical trajectory. During the British Mandate in Palestine, the Palestinian Druze aligned themselves with the Zionist movement—a position they had firmly adopted by the 1936–39 Arab Revolt. In contrast, the Druze communities in Syria and Lebanon have followed markedly different political and social paths.

In 1925, Sultan al-Atrash, a prominent Druze leader in Syria, spearheaded the Great Syrian Revolt against French colonial rule, becoming a symbol of resistance across the Arab world. While the Druze in Palestine later aligned themselves with the Israeli state—serving in its military and identifying as Israeli—those in the occupied Golan Heights took a different stance. When Israel annexed Syria’s Golan Heights in 1981, most of the Druze population there rejected Israeli citizenship, maintaining their allegiance to Syria.

During Syria’s civil war, the Druze largely sided with the Syrian government, as it had historically acted as a bulwark against the threat posed by groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda. This presented a challenge for Israel, which had long sought to establish a “buffer zone” inside Syria.

By February 2013, Israel had proposed a buffer zone extending ten miles into Syrian territory, aiming to secure strategic land it had failed to retain during the 1973 war against Hafez al-Assad’s government. Later that year, two additional buffer zones were drafted in coordination with Jordan and the United States. One stretched from south of Damascus to the Jordanian border, while the other spanned the area between Dara’a and the Druze-majority province of Suwayda.

To reinforce these proposed buffer zones, it was suggested that the United States position a force of 20,000 soldiers on standby in Jordan as a security guarantee. At the same time, Israel pursued a dual strategy—backing sectarian militant groups that targeted Syria’s minority communities while simultaneously attempting to cultivate ties with Syrian Druze factions. The goal was to form a protective alliance against the very groups Israel was covertly supporting.

In 2015, as Israel was backing al-Nusra (now Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS), the group carried out a massacre of 20 Druze civilians. This atrocity became the basis for another Israeli push to establish a buffer zone, with officials arguing that it was necessary to prevent a “mass genocide” against Syrian Druze. Despite these efforts, the proposal for a buffer zone once again failed to gain traction.

However, Israel did not abandon efforts to cultivate ties with the Druze. Even as the war in Syria began to reach a standstill in 2018, Israeli outreach continued. Meanwhile, the Druze population endured a series of devastating attacks, including an ISIS-led massacre in Suwayda in July 2018, which left more than 200 people dead.

The Plot To Prop Up Druze Separatists

In 2019, the Trump administration approved the Caesar Act sanctions, which took effect the following year, dealing a devastating blow to Syria’s already fragile economy. As the country’s financial crisis deepened, Israel and the U.S. saw an opportunity to exploit growing tensions between Damascus and Syria’s Druze.

By June 2020, the impact of the sanctions was already being felt on the ground. The Syrian pound’s value plummeted, exacerbating economic hardship across the country. Against this backdrop, protests began to emerge, initially small but steadily increasing in scale and intensity with each passing year.

On July 7, 2021, a Druze separatist group known as the Syrian Liwa Party emerged, quickly forging ties with Washington through al-Tanf Province, a U.S.-occupied area located west of Suwayda. The group’s rise marked a significant shift in the region’s power dynamics, as it aligned itself with American interests despite broader opposition within the Druze community.

The Syrian Liwa Party maintained direct links to a Druze sectarian militia called the “Counter-Terrorism Force,” which publicly stated that its primary mission was to “curb the regime’s facilitation of Iranian militias, most notably Lebanese Hezbollah.”

In 2022, as anti-government protests in Suwayda grew larger, Israel took a more active role in shaping the region’s political trajectory. Sheikh Mowafaq Tarif, the head of Israel’s Druze community, was dispatched to Moscow to advocate for the federalization of Syria, a move that aligned with Israeli interests in weakening Damascus.

By September 2023, protests erupted again, but this time, Western corporate media reframed them as women-led demonstrations, amplifying their visibility on the global stage. That same month, the U.S. Congress moved to tighten its already debilitating sanctions on Syria, further deepening the country’s economic crisis.

Following the fall of former President al-Assad, a group calling itself the Interim Military Council emerged from Suwayda, led by Tareq al-Shoufi. On the same day that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu demanded the withdrawal of all Syrian army forces from southern Syria, al-Shoufi announced the formation of the Suwayda Military Council (SMC).

The SMC, a coalition of separatist Druze militias, quickly aligned itself with Israel. Its leader, Commander al-Shoufi, openly welcomed Netanyahu’s promise to “protect” Syria’s Druze. However, the council does not represent the majority of Syria’s Druze population, many of whom remained in dialogue with Damascus.

Prominent Druze leaders, including Hikmat al-Hajeri, the community’s spiritual leader in Syria, denounced the SMC, calling it illegitimate and rejecting its authority. Despite Israeli and Western attempts to fragment the community, significant segments of Syria’s Druze leadership continue to reject foreign interference in their internal affairs.

Syria: A Druze militia in Suweida forms a “Military Council” and allies with the US-backed SDF in northeast Syria (Video)

Soon after, Netanyahu demands demilitarization south of Damascus from the new Syrian government forces and warns against threats to Syria’s Druze(Photo) pic.twitter.com/SKTWG2vSzj

— Warfare Analysis (@warfareanalysis) February 23, 2025

Despite questions of legitimacy, Israel’s efforts to carve out a Druze state in southern Syria persist. Plans are already in motion to offer Syrian Druze salaries of approximately $100 a day to assist in building illegal settlement infrastructure in the occupied Golan Heights. The strategy is modeled after Israel’s “Good Fence” policy of the 1980s, which was used to secure a foothold in southern Lebanon through the use of local proxy forces, which at the time were composed of predominantly Christian militias.

Israeli tanks continue to push deeper into Syrian territory, with some even spotted flying the Druze national flag. Meanwhile, Israeli airstrikes hammer targets across the country with impunity, further destabilizing a nation already teetering on the edge of fragmentation.

Feature photo | Illustration by MintPress News | Original photo by AP

Robert Inlakesh is a political analyst, journalist and documentary filmmaker currently based in London, UK. He has reported from and lived in the occupied Palestinian territories and hosts the show ‘Palestine Files’. Director of ‘Steal of the Century: Trump’s Palestine-Israel Catastrophe’. Follow him on Twitter @falasteen47

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