“The people of Majdal Shams were scared to normalize or become citizens of Israel because of the Assad regime,” Sheikh Mowafaq Tarif told JNS. “Now the situation is different.”
The fall of Bashar Assad in Syria is opening new doors for the Druze community in the Israeli Golan Heights, Sheikh Mowafaq Tarif, the spiritual leader of the Druze community in Israel, told JNS on Wednesday.
Speaking in Arabic via a translator at a Hudson Institute event in Washington, Tarif said fear of the Assads had limited the hand of the Druze in their four villages in the Golan. Under the new Syrian leader Abu Mohammad al-Julani, there is an opportunity for engagement, according to Tarif.
“We cannot forget that the previous regime was merciless,” he said. “When the 1973 war started, the first thing they struck was the Druze. Before they even struck the army.”