TUNIS, November 16. /TASS/. A Druze delegation has arrived in the Jordanian capital city for talks with representatives of the Syrian interim government on the situation in Syria’s southern al-Sweida governorate, Syria TV reported.
According to the television channel, the meeting will also be attended by a US delegation. The talks will focus on the roadmap for setting the situation in al-Sweida following another escalation in early November. Jordanian sources told the TV channel that Jordan has categorically rejected Israel’s idea of opening a special checkpoint to enter the governorate because it insists that the situation be settled on the basis of the ‘Syrian integrity’ principle.
The interior ministry in the Syrian interim government reported earlier this week that armed groups had been violating the ceasefire for several days in a row. Shootouts between Druze self-defense forces and Arab tribal militias were reported in several locations in the governorate. Armed clashes have spread around areas south of the city, killing several Syrian troops.
The conflict between Arab militias and Druzes living in al-Sweida flared up in mid-July. According to the Asharq al Awsat newspaper, the clashes claimed more than 1,600 lives and led to power outages and problems with water supplies, as well as shortages of food, medicine and fuel in southern regions. On July 19, Syria’s interim president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, declared a ceasefire in the Sweida governorate in accordance with the internationally-mediated peace settlement plan.
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 opted to reserve their Syrian citizenship. Syria’s Druze population numbers around 700,000, being the third biggest ethnoreligious minority after the Kurds and Alawites.