Over the past 48hrs, the skies over Syria have lit up with fire once again. Islamic militias--radical factions with deep ties to jihadist ideology--have launched coordinated assaults on the Druze community, particularly near the Golan Heights. In response, Israel has taken swift and decisive action to defend the Druze, bombing over a hundred Syrian military and militia-linked targets. It was only last week that there was talk of a possible peace accord between Israel and Syria. It's hard to see how that will now happen anytime soon.
The Druze, a small ethnoreligious group with a long and complex history in the Middle East, have long maintained relative peace with Israel. Many Druze serve in the Israeli Defense Forces, and their villages dot the borderlands of the Golan. For Israel, allowing radical Islamic militias to overrun Druze territory would not only be a humanitarian betrayal but also a strategic disaster. The defense of the Druze is not only a moral imperative for Israel--it's a national security one. But this flare-up is not happening in a vacuum.
Syria's so-called "new leadership"--which was hoped by some international observers to usher in a fresh era of diplomacy--has proven to be little more than a reshuffled collection of old actors cloaked in new robes. Though the civil war has left Syria fractured and fatigued, Islamic fundamentalists still hold influence across swaths of territory, especially where central government control is weak or absent. The promise of reform has quickly withered under the weight of warlord politics, regional interference, and extremist dogma. (Read More)
