Israel on Wednesday killed at least one Syrian security services operative in a drone strike outside Damascus that it said was meant to stop an “extremist group” from attacking a Druze village.
The strike came after clashes between government-allied forces and Druze gunmen on Monday left at least 22 people dead after a Druze leader was accused of insulting the Prophet Mohammed.
Who are the Druze again? A tight-knit Arabic-speaking ethnoreligious group who follow a thousand-year-old syncretic offshoot of Islam. They are spread throughout Syria, Lebanon, and Israel, and are often stigmatized as heretics by Muslim fundamentalists.
The background: Sectarian violence has been a major challenge for the government of Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa, who led the jihadist opposition that overthrew the Assad regime last December. Al-Sharaa, a former al-Qaida member, has tried to style himself as a reformist statesman.
Why is Israel involved? Israel, keen to preempt any perceived threats from the new Syria, has bombed Syrian military facilities and unilaterally created a “buffer zone” in the country’s Southwest. It has also backed Syrian Druze communities, warning the Syrian government not to “harm” them. The connection between Israel and the Druze goes back decades: Druze in Israel are fiercely loyal to the state and are the only Arab community that serves in the IDF.
The upshot: As al-Sharaa struggles to stabilize and rebuild a country wrecked by war and strangled by sanctions, sectarian tensions are escalating into a regional issue that is only making his task harder.