Golan Heights Druze Resistance

The Druze are a distinct monotheistic religious community consisting mostly of Arabic speakers and based primarily in Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, and Syria. The faith tradition is an offshoot of Islam with additional influences from other religious and philosophical traditions, including Greek philosophy.

When Israel seized the Golan Heights of southwestern Syria in 1967, they forced most of the population to flee. However, five villages populated by Druze remained. The Israelis sought to gradually annex the territory and began pressuring the Druze to accept Israeli identification cards. While most of the Druze in Israel have willingly accepted Israeli citizenship and are among the few non-Jews who serve in the Israeli army, the Syrian Druze under Israeli occupation resisted. In December 1981, when the Israelis formally extended direct administration over the territory, they began an attempt to systematically coerce the population to accept Israeli citizenship. The Druze began a nonviolent resistance campaign against the decision, which included a general strike, peaceful demonstrations, and violating curfews. They systematically ignored military restrictions against fraternization between villages and public demonstrations. Children and adults eagerly sought arrest and many engaged in a “reverse strike,” installing a sewer pipeline that the occupation forces had refused to support. As many as 15,000 Israeli troops occupied the area, imposing a 43-day state of siege, destroying homes, arresting hundreds of people and shooting suspects, without apparent objection from the United States, which provided military, diplomatic, and financial support for the Israeli occupation. Eventually, however, the Israeli government ended their insistence that the Druze accept Israeli citizenship and promised not to conscript Golani Druze into the army, to allow them to open economic relations with their fellow Syrians across the armistice line, and to no longer interfere with Druze civil, water, and land rights.

When the Israelis refused to live up to these promises, mass protests and civil disobedience continued, forcing the Israelis to compromise further. This [Page 625]reversal in Israeli policy was made possible largely because Israeli soldiers, who were highly skilled at traditional warfare and counterinsurgency operations, did not know how to effectively suppress a nonviolent resistance campaign. The success of the Israeli military has traditionally been based on the widespread conviction within its ranks that their military actions are addressing genuine security needs for their country and individual soldiers often find their lives in danger. Faced with a disciplined unarmed civilian population, however, which did not threaten Israeli security or the soldiers' personal safety, led to an unprecedented breakdown in the morale and discipline of Israeli occupation forces in the Golan.

The successes of this resistance effort inspired Palestinians also living under Israeli occupation to rethink their previous reliance on armed struggle by exiled guerrilla groups and to consider the efficacy of unarmed resistance in the West Bank and Gaza. Within a few years, the first and largely nonviolent intifada had begun.