TEL AVIV, December 13. /TASS/. Residents of the Druze village of Hader in Syria near the border with Israel have expressed their desire to come under Israeli rule, The Times of Israel said, citing a video posted on social networks.
The video features a man calling on his fellow villagers to choose "the lesser evil" after the change of power in Damascus. "And even if it’s considered evil to ask to be annexed to the [Israeli] Golan, it’s a much lesser evil than the evil coming our way," he was quoted as saying. According to the newspaper, the Arab-language video had English subtitles.
"We asked to be annexed to the Golan to preserve our dignity," the man said, adding that he speaks for the entire Druze community in the Quneitra governorate. "We ask in the name of all the surrounding area to join our people in the Golan, and to live with freedom and dignity like our people are living [in Israel]," he said.
However, according to the Kan radio stations, the authenticity of the video has not been verified.
The Druze are a tight-knit ethnoreligious Arabic-speaking group living mainly in Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and Jordan who adhere to a specific faith that split from Shiite Islam in the Middle Ages. Israeli Druzes live in Galilee in the north of the country and serve in the Israeli army and police along with Jews. However, after Israel gained control over the Golan Heights in the Six-Day War in 1967, most of the Druzes living there have preserved their Syrian citizenship.
Armed opposition units in Syria launched a large-scale offensive on government troops in the Aleppo and Idlib governorates in late November. On December 8, they entered Damascus, while President Bashar Assad stepped down and fled the country. On December 10, Mohammed al-Bashir, who had led the so-called Syrian Salvation Government in the Idlib governorate, announced his appointment as head of Syria’s interim government, saying that the transitional period will last until March 1, 2025.
Early on December 8, Israel officially announced the deployment of its forces to the buffer zone on the border with Syria in the Golan Heights. According to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, this was a temporary measure taken in light of the recent developments in neighboring Syria to protect Israel from potential threats. He pledged however that Israeli troops would remain in the area until Israel received security guarantees on this border section.