The southern Syrian village of Hader has reportedly requested to be incorporated in the Israeli-occupied part of the Golan Heights, according to the Times of Israel. The outlet cited an unverified video where a member of the Druze community expressed concerns over the future of his people.
Bashar Assad’s government fell last week after opposition forces, led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) jihadists, launched a surprise offensive across Syria and took control of its major cities, including the capital Damascus. The erstwhile president has since resigned and sought asylum with his family in Russia.
In a video posted to X on Friday that features captions in English, a Hader resident claiming to be a representative of the Druze people, an esoteric ethnoreligious group, urged a large crowd to consider what their future will be like. The village is located within the buffer zone between Israel and Syria, which IDF troops entered last week.
“If we have to choose, we will choose the lesser evil,” he said. “And even if it’s considered evil to ask to be annexed to the [Israeli] Golan, it’s a much lesser evil than the evil coming our way,” the man added, apparently referring to the HTS, which was formerly known as the Al Nusra front – an offshoot of Al Qaeda in Syria.
Read More: Former OpenAI Employee Who Accused Company of Copyright Violation Found Dead
“That evil might take our women, might take our daughters, they might take our houses,” he said, pleading for the Syrian Druze to be freed from the “injustice and oppression” that had been imposed on them in the past, and could be imposed again by Islamist rebel groups.
“We have asked to be annexed to the Golan to preserve our dignity” the man, who claimed to speak on behalf of the Druze community across the surrounding area of Quneitra Governorate, said. “We ask in the name of all the surrounding area to join our people in the Golan, and to live with freedom and dignity like our people are living [in Israel].
Around 48% of Syria’s Druze resided in the Suwayda Governorate some 90 kilometers from the border with Israel prior to the civil war, the Times of Israel reported citing a 2010 census. Since then, however, it is believed that many of them have fled the region for safer parts of the country.