Bedouin fighters in Syria have said that they have launched a new offensive against Druze militiamen, despite the withdrawal of Syrian government forces from the southwestern province of Suwayda, and an attempt by the country’s president to draw a line under a recent outbreak of deadly violence.
A Bedouin military commander told the Reuters news agency on Thursday that the truce only applied to government forces and not to them, adding that the fighters were seeking to free Bedouins whom Druze armed groups had detained in recent days.
Clashes occured in the western countryside of Suwayda, with reports that Arab tribal forces from Idlib, in northwestern Syria, were mobilising to support the Bedouins after reports of mass displacement and killings emerged.
And the Syrian state news agency SANA added that Israel had conducted an air attack in the vicinity of Suwayda.
The reports come despite a ceasefire agreed on Wednesday, after Israel had conducted its own attacks on Syria, striking the Ministry of Defence in Damascus.
Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa said in a televised speech early on Thursday that protecting the country’s Druze citizens and their rights was a priority as he announced that local leaders would take control of security in Suwayda in a bid to end sectarian violence in the south and stop Israel from attacking.
The Syrian leader addressed days of fierce fighting involving Druze armed groups, Bedouin tribes and government forces in the predominantly Druze city of Suwayda and its surrounding areas.
Israel, which sees the Druze as allies and has its own sizeable Druze minority, launched a series of strikes near Syria’s presidential palace and on the military headquarters in the heart of Damascus on Wednesday, killing at least three people. It warned Syria it would escalate its attacks further if government forces did not withdraw from the south and halt attacks against the Druze community.
“We are eager on holding accountable those who transgressed and abused our Druze people because they are under the protection and responsibility of the state,” al-Sharaa said in the speech, describing the minority as “a fundamental part of the fabric of this nation”.
“We affirm that protecting your rights and freedoms is among our top priorities,” he said. “We reject any attempt, foreign or domestic, to sow division within our ranks.”
Al-Sharaa said “responsibility” for security in the violence-plagued area would be handed over to religious elders and some local factions “based on the supreme national interest”.
At least 169 people have been killed in the violence in southern Syria in recent days, local sources told Al Jazeera, while the United Kingdom-based war monitor, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said more than 360 people have been killed.
Troops withdraw
Al-Sharaa’s remarks came after the Syrian government and Druze leader Sheikh Yousef Jarbou announced a new ceasefire in the city and said the army had begun withdrawing from Suwayda. Dozens of Syrian military vehicles were seen leaving the city overnight.
Reporting from Suwayda, Al Jazeera’s Zeina Khodr said “a tense calm” had settled on the city on Thursday morning. “Whether or not it will hold, we have to wait and see,” she said.
She said the Druze community, a small but influential minority in both Syria and Israel, was “divided” over its stance towards the new Syrian authorities, who took over after the fall of longtime President Bashar al-Assad in December.
Jarbou, who said he agreed to the ceasefire, condemned the Israeli strikes on Syria, telling Al Jazeera Arabic that “any attack on the Syrian state is an attack on the Druze community”.
But another influential Druze leader in the city, Sheikh Hikmat al-Hajari, said he rejected the ceasefire and promised to continue fighting until Suwayda was “entirely liberated”. Khodr said al-Hajari’s whereabouts were unknown, and it was unclear whether fighters affiliated with him would “continue to put up a fight”.
‘Israeli entity has targeted our stability and sowed discord’
In his speech, al-Sharaa called for national unity, saying: “The building of a new Syria requires all of us to stand united behind our state, to commit to its principles and to place the interest of the nation above any personal or limited interest.”
Addressing the Druze community, he said the government rejected “any attempt to drag you into the hands of an external party”, in a pointed reference to Israel’s deadly intervention in the conflict.
“The Israeli entity, which has consistently targeted our stability and sowed discord since the fall of the former regime, now seeks once again to turn our sacred land into a theatre of endless chaos,” he said.
“We are not among those who fear the war. We have spent our lives facing challenges and defending our people, but we have put the interests of the Syrians before chaos and destruction.”
He added that Israel’s strikes, including those that killed three people and injured 34 in Damascus on Wednesday, could have pushed “matters to a large-scale escalation if it were not for the intervention of US, Turkish and Arab mediators, “which saved the region from an unknown fate”.
The United States, which has softened its stance towards Syria and is trying to re-engage and support the country’s reconstruction after more than 13 years of war, has been eager to de-escalate the conflict, which Department of State spokesperson Tammy Bruce called “a misunderstanding between new neighbours”. The US called on Syria on Wednesday to withdraw its troops from the southern border area to de-escalate tensions.
Israel’s attacks on Syria has garnered widespread global condemnation, with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan calling the bombings a threat to regional stability.
“Israel, using the Druze as an excuse, has been expanding its banditry into neighbouring Syria over the past two days,” Erdogan said in a televised speech after the weekly cabinet meeting. “Israel is a lawless, unruly, unprincipled, spoiled, pampered, and greedy terrorist state,” he said.
In a joint statement, the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt, Jordan, the UAE, Turkey, and other regional states reaffirmed their support for Syria’s sovereignty, unity, and stability, while rejecting all foreign interference.
The statement condemned ongoing Israeli attacks on Syrian territory, labeling them violations of international law and a threat to regional stability. It further urged the international community to assist in Syria’s reconstruction and called on the UN Security Council to ensure Israel’s withdrawal from occupied Syrian land.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu defended the strikes, saying on Thursday Israel would continue to use military means to guarantee that the Syrian government respects two “red lines”, which he said are the demilitarisation of Syrian territory south of Damascus and attacks on the Syrian Druze community.
Actions ‘louder than words’
Speaking to Al Jazeera, Mohamad Elmasry, professor of media studies at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, said al-Sharaa’s speech contained encouraging messages about the place of the Druze minority in Syrian society.
“He said that the Druze are an essential component,” Elmasry said. “He said it’s the Syrian government’s responsibility to protect them and to hold to account those who have transgressed against them in recent days.”
But he said it would all come down to how his government behaved in the aftermath of the speech.
“I think their actions will speak louder than words for those minority groups in Syria.”
He said the speech also contained a note of warning to Israel that al-Sharaa’s government did not fear war and that “anyone who starts a war with Syria … would regret it.”
“These were messages directed at Israel, and it marked a very significant departure from what we’ve heard from him and at times not heard from him when Israel has attacked Syria,” Elmasry said.
“I think we’re at a potentially dangerous tipping point, and it really will come down to, I think, the extent to which [President] Donald Trump and the United States are willing to kind of rein in Israel,” he said.
“It’s a very difficult situation in Syria. You are talking about a very multiethnic society. You have outside forces, starting with Israel, trying to basically fragment the country and establish a separatist system, if you will, in Syria,” Elmasry said.
Cycle of violence
The escalation in Syria began with tit-for-tat kidnappings and attacks between Druze armed factions and local Sunni Bedouin tribes in Suwayda province.
Government forces that intervened to restore order clashed with the Druze, and Syrian soldiers were reported to have committed abuses, according to local monitors and analysts.
The actions committed by members of the security forces – acknowledged as “unlawful criminal acts” by the Syrian presidency – have given Israel a pretext to bombard Syria as it builds military bases in the Golan Heights in the demilitarised buffer zone with Syria on land seized by its forces.
Fighting previously broke out between government troops and Druze fighters in April and May, killing dozens of people. Local leaders and religious figures responded by signing agreements to contain the escalation and better integrate Druze fighters into the new Syrian administration.
The Druze developed their own militias during the Syrian war. Since al-Assad’s fall, Druze factions have been operating with a degree of autonomy in Suwayda and its surrounding areas, Khodr said.
Israel has been trying to expand its control in southern Syria since al-Assad’s fall and has repeatedly bombed the country this year.
During the fighting in Suwayda, Israel demanded the Syrian troop withdrawal to create a demilitarised zone in southern Syria and has been moving its ground forces deeper into the Golan Heights.
