Why did the Druze Support the Jews?

Deep ideological bonds or realpolitik?

At the start of the week, members of the Druze community (along with the Circassians) announced that they were launching a week of protests against government discrimination. “We are not only equal in battle,” the protest leaders declared. “The covenants of blood and life have become superficial and false slogans.” Their demands include work to regulate construction in the Druze sector, the repeal of the Nation-State Law and the Kaminitz Law, the approval of the Electricity Bill and “attention to the plight of the young Druze who pay a heavy price for the defense of the state.” This marks the latest deterioration in a relationship that has too often been taken for granted. How, though, did it begin?

The Druze are an offshoot of Shia Islam that began in Egypt in the eleventh century before escaping persecution by fleeing to the mountainous areas of the Levant. Today there are an estimated one million Druze worldwide, including around 150,000 in Israel, about two percent of the population, mostly based in the Western Galilee, Upper Galilee, and Mount Carmel (the story of the Syrian Druze in the Golan Heights is different and won’t be covered in this piece). Since Israel’s creation, they have been loyal to the state and have been conscripted into the army. Today around 40% of Druze men work for the security services in some capacity. Their support for the state is often explained by an age-old bond between Druze and Jews built around the common heritage of Jethro, Moses’s father-in-law, as well as their shared status as minorities in an otherwise hostile Middle East. This view was described neatly by Yitzhak Ben-Zvi in 1950:

This nation – the Druzes – has special features and a special destiny that sets it apart from other nations. In certain ways, it is similar to the Jewish nation because of a fundamental characteristic. Here, too, religion and nationalism are so united…But there is another side which highlights the similarity between the Jews and the Druzes, and that is the destiny of the two nations – a destiny of minorities. The Druze too suffered persecutions at the hands of [a] majority…All these [factors] have brought the Druzes closer to the destiny of the Jewish minority and made it possible for them to understand the psychology of the persecuted Jewish minority.

These explanations, though, are offered with the benefit of hindsight, when in reality the Druze-Jewish alliance is the result of much more quotidian concerns of power and survival.

Before 1948, due to their remote, rural location, the Druze (who then numbered around 13,000 and one percent of the Arab population of Mandate Palestine) were largely isolated from Palestinian nationalist trends. The Yishuv had already identified them as possible allies in the 1920s, with the aforementioned Ben-Zvi (who was co-director of the Joint Bureau for Arab Affairs) writing a report in 1930 entitled ‘The Establishing of Good Relations with our Neighbors, the Druze in Eretz Israel.” This was seen as the path to forming links with the more numerically significant and powerful Druze communities in Syria and Lebanon. Or, as Aharon Haim Cohen, intelligence officer with the Joint Bureau for Arab Affairs, said: “[this policy was] a way to establish spots of light and inspiration inside the dark Arab sea all around us.”

In the period prior to the War of Independence, the Druze were divided on who to support, and came under pressure from both sides. In early 1946, a group of Druze notables met in Haifa and decided to stop relying on the Muslims and to move closer to the Jews. In response, Sheikh Nimr al-Khatib, leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine, criticized the Druze for not being “nationalist” and not “taking any hostile actions against the Jews.” According to Yoav Gelber (‘Druze and Jews in the War of 1948’), Druze in mixed Muslim/Christian-Druze areas were more supportive of Jews, followed by those in villages bordering Jewish areas, with those living in otherwise Muslim/Christian areas being the least supportive.

Some Druze worked with the Jews. In January 1948 Shai (pre-state intelligence service) officials met with Salih Khanayfis, a Druze from the mixed Druze-Christian-Muslim town of Shefa-Amr whose father had been killed by Muslims during the Arab Revolt. “The Druze still remain friendly towards the Jews [despite pressure],” he told them. “This is for two reasons: the Druze as a minority believe that the strengthening of the Jews will benefit them and the Druze as men of labor and peace have much sympathy for this [Jewish] struggle; indeed all the Druze take a neutral position, both those in the country [i.e. Palestine] and those from the Druze mountain [Jabal Druze – the Druze-dominated area of Syria].”

We can’t take everything he said at face value, first because he may have been telling the intelligence agents what they wanted to hear, and second because there was little evidence of pro-Jewish activities among the Western Galilee Druze during this time; nor is there much by way of proof for what he said about those in Jabal Druze. In fact, elsewhere, some Syrian Druze formed an Arab Liberation Army (ALA) battalion of about 500 men, a relatively small number, because the recruitment drive in Druze areas hadn’t been so successful, but still noteworthy. In late March 1948, after being stationed in Shefa-Amr, it fought the Haganah, despite Jewish efforts to bribe them into withdrawing. The battle took place near Ramat Yohanan in the Lower Galilee and was a closely fought victory for the Jewish forces (Moshe Dayan’s brother Zorik was killed in the battle). Shakib Wahab, the battalion commander, blamed ALA leaders in Damascus for the defeat.

According to Laila Parsons (‘The Palestinian Druze in the 1947-1949 Arab-Israeli War’), the defeat “eroded much of the resistance to collaboration with the Jewish side that remained amongst those Druze who had originally supported the aims of the battalion.” That April, the Jews won important victories at Mishmar Ha’Emek, al-Qastal, Tiberias, and Haifa. The following month, Israel declared independence. Some of the ALA Druze battalion officers met secretly with the Haganah to see if they could change sides. Still suspicious, the Haganah agreed to allow the Druze to carry out sabotage operations in the Upper Galilee and to encourage desertion from the ALA battalion. In July, the IDF launched an attack on Shefa-Amr as part of Operation Dekel. The troops invaded the town through the Druze quarter, with each side shooting into the air instead of at each other, before capturing the Muslim quarter from the rear. The alliance was now solidified.

Next, the Israelis tried to secure the support of the Druze in the Western Galilee. The Druze declared that they would not fight with the Arabs and would resist ALA attempts to occupy their village, while Israel promised troops and supplies. This in turn led to the establishment of the Unit of the Minorities, which was primarily made up of Druze. Foreign Ministry official Yaacov Shimoni said the Druze were used as “the sharp blade of a knife to stab in the back of Arab unity.” One platoon featured soldiers from Shakib Wahab’s old battalion, and the other was made up of Druze from Mount Carmel and Shefa-Amr. By the end of the war, it had 400 troops, which included small numbers of Bedouin, Circassians, and Christians. Like the ALA Druze battalion, this was a militarily insignificant number, but politically it was of great importance.

It did however take part in one battle of interest during Operation Hiram, which aimed to complete the defeat of the ALA in the Galilee. There, the Unit of the Minorities fought against Druze from the villages of Yanuh and Jat (today these form a single village called Yanuh-Jat). Despite a secret agreement not to resist, the villagers fought back, causing unexpected IDF losses, and increasing Israeli suspicion of the Druze. This is the backdrop for one of the most controversial debates about 1948, surrounding the issue of whether there were official Israeli guidelines about what to do with each conquered Palestinian community. Morris argues that there weren’t, but Parson convincingly disputes this, noting that, in this case, Druze villages that resisted were allowed to remain, while elsewhere Christian villagers who didn’t resist were expelled.

Why, then, did the Druze end up supporting the Jews? According to Parsons:

there existed politically active, pro-Jewish Druze families who had maintained contact with certain Zionist officials since the days of the Mandate, and that the advantages that the pro-Jewish activities of these individuals brought to the Druze community as a whole during a time of great hardship and fear created a ground swell of support for the alliance.

These advantages included special travel permits, free medical care for families of IDF soldiers, and permission to harvest their crops (on 13 June 1948 the chief of staff issued an order prohibiting Arabs from reaping their fields). She continues:

At the beginning of the war, the Druze saw two possibilities: living as a minority in a Jewish state, or living as a minority in a Muslim state. Because of their particularism and their consequent sense of alienation from the Palestinian national cause, most Druze were in a position to remain neutral as long as was feasible and then to go with the side that looked like winning.

The Druze are famously loyal to the country where they live. In cases of conflict between two peoples living in the same land, this requires a sharp knack for sensing which way the wind is turning, as getting it wrong could be fatal. This is why the Druze ultimately supported the Jews in 1948, not because of an age-old bond based on their shared heritage as minorities in the Middle East or the relationship between Jethro and Moses. And yet this remains a popular myth. In part two, I’ll explain how this came to be.