Majdal Shams should be a moment for reflection, not escalation

Druze religious leaders preside over the funeral of a child killed in Majdal Shams, in the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights, on July 29. AP

To see how precarious the position of minority communities can become after generations of regional conflict, one need only look to the four Arab towns to the south of Mount Hermon, in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Inhabited predominantly by members of the Druze religious community, they were annexed from Syria illegally by Israel in 1967, and most of their residents voluntarily retain Syrian citizenship. Now, the largest of them, Majdal Shams, has become a cause-celebre for the hawkish Israeli right after 12 of its children were tragically killed in a rocket attack launched from nearby Lebanon on July 27.

Israel has pointed the finger at Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group, claiming it intended to hit an Israeli base on Mount Hermon but missed and hit the town instead. The rocket landed shortly after an Israeli strike in Lebanon killed four Hezbollah fighters.

Hezbollah, for its part, denies responsibility – probably because the killing of 12 Arab children runs counter to its claim of resistance to Israeli oppression against fellow Arabs. It could also complicate relations between the militants and Lebanon’s own quarter-million-strong Druze community, whose leader Walid Joumblatt has endorsed Hezbollah’s cause.

Right-wing members of Israel’s security cabinet soon showed up in Majdal Shams to mourn, despite a request from Yasser Gadban, a local Druze community leader, for them to stay away. “Due to the sensitivity of the situation, we ask that you not turn a massacre into a political event. We are requesting a quiet, religious funeral in accordance with Druze custom,” he wrote in a letter.

One of the ministers, Bezalel Smotrich, who has repeatedly called for war against Lebanon, was surrounded by angry locals on arrival.

About 80 per cent of the Druze community of the Golan Heights has refused to take up Israeli citizenship, either because of their rejection of the occupation or to avoid being accused of collaborating with Israel if the territory ever returns to Syria. This puts them at odds with the rest of Israel’s Druze community of 150,000 people, most of whom have accepted Israeli rule as the surest means of their survival, even as they continue to maintain links with the rest of the community in Lebanon and Syria.

It could also complicate relations between the militants and Lebanon’s own Druze community, whose leader Walid Jumblatt has endorsed Hezbollah’s cause

Yet even in the Golan, a very small but growing number of young Druze are accepting the offer of Israeli citizenship. The longer the status quo of the occupation continues, the more Israeli identity has become an unavoidable part of life.

But it also raises questions of whether Israel is willing to accept the responsibility that comes with its occupation. Israeli society has been quick to claim the victims of Saturday’s attack as its own, yet air raid sirens went off only seconds before the rocket hit, and ambulances took more than an hour to arrive. Many in the town speak of feeling abandoned, and caught in the middle of a conflict that has little to do with them.

That is an experience familiar to many minority groups in this conflict. Israel’s Christian and Muslim Palestinian residents, for example, are no strangers to competing identities and questions of loyalty. Across the Levant, ancient and tightly knit communities have been left divided and vulnerable by decades of redrawn borders, power struggles and extremist violence.

At the same time, the existence of shared communities across these borders is also perhaps the greatest reminder of how much this intensely divided region really has in common. Instead of using the tragedy at Majdal Shams to advance war aims, perhaps this is what the central message of regional leaders ought to be.