Dr. Ahmad Al Hyari

Minorities have never been a crisis in the Arab region, specifically in the Levant. Sectarian and ethnic diversity was one of the most important features of these countries, so what happened until it seemed that this diversity could turn into a crisis, or constitute a state of security, political and economic instability?

Israel is not the only reason, but it was able to exploit any security loophole in the region's algorithm to access it, maximize it, and tamper with its structure.

Let's take the deposed Syrian regime as an example. It gradually built itself on a sectarian basis and made minorities its address. The majority was accused and the minorities were protected.

The Syrian people overthrew this regime, and it seems that a new policy is based on the actions of the new administration that is leading Syria today, but two political groups do not seem happy with what happened: Some Alawite sheikhs and the Kurdish political leadership. As for the Kurds, they were not a Syrian national issue, but one of the addresses of the “gaps” of the entire region, and the Syrian administration succeeded in cooling their crisis with the support of external factors and helpers.

Pushed by external factors and hands as well, a “loophole” has emerged, entitled the Druze community, whose details will quickly realize its danger, but not for its own sake, but for the detailed placement of external hands in it, and not just any hand its Israel.

In contrast to a massive Israeli effort to contain the community in the region, we seem to be facing modest Arab efforts to strengthen the community's immunity from Israeli tampering.

There are many paradoxes in what is intended to turn into a crisis. In fact, the main concern was that northern Syria, where the Kurdish areas are the weakest part of the Syrian people. Suddenly this is no longer the case, as northern Syria is moving towards a solution in a way that surprised everyone, while the Suwayda crisis has suddenly exploded, a crisis that appears from the beginning to be dangerous, sensitive, and ready to expand.

The Druze areas have never been a crisis for the region, and they are not today, but Israeli tampering is working hard to make the whole region aflame. It seems that the Arab weakness will not be able to activate its tools and succeed as it did in northern Syria.

In southern Syria, we are facing paralysis in the Arab responses to the crisis, even though it is a crisis that threatens the surrounding Arab countries, which are many, so where is the Arab vision and response?

While everyone sees with the naked eye the Israeli threat through the Israeli army's implementation of a series of measures in Quneitra and Suwayda until Damascus itself is threatened, and its taking security and even economic measures, we do not see any Arab and not only Syrian actions to protect the region from Israel's audacity in the region.

The Suwayda fence surrounds the region and could form a belt of fire, while the Arabs are required to take care of the region, embrace it and form a wall of defense against the Israeli dream.

From the Golan to the Euphrates, this is the Israeli dream. A dream shaped by a corridor that Israeli political thinkers called the Corridor of David, which aspires to build a Greater Israel.

It started in the 1980s when the Israeli army was occupying the Lebanese capital, then died down, then came back to life.

The dream is back in Israeli plans, and because it needs pillars to ensure its implementation, Israel seeks to build these pillars: A state in northern Syria for the Kurds, and another in the south for the Druze.

Not only that, the Israeli corridor is based on fundamental tools, on top of which is the division of the region into small, conflicting states ruled by sects and sectarianism.

Israel, a country that is completely alien to the region, needs to fragment the fragmented in order to ensure its security and continuity. Israel's security strategy is based on the premise that ensuring Israel's security requires spreading security chaos in the region. Nothing will ensure this more than the fragmentation of the region into conflicting and warring states that hate each other. At the center of it all is the strong and powerful state of Israel.

In the midst of this plan, we must see the scene of Israeli buses carrying dozens of Druze sheikhs from Quneitra and the Damascus countryside, which were received by the Israelis at the occupied Majdal Shams crossing with banners reading, "It is written on our swords, welcome to our guests."

This is among other scenes in which the stones of the partition are completed to prepare the complete plan, including the flow of Israeli aid packages that entered the areas of southern Syria, specifically those inhabited by the Druze community, during the past days, while the occupation announced the completion of preparations to receive Druze workers who will soon enter the Golan for work.

The visit of the community's elders is the first in 50 years. Far from claiming to be a pilgrimage to the tomb of the Prophet Shuaib in the Lower Galilee inside the occupied Palestinian territories, it is a visit that should be deeply troubling for the entire region before it is for the new Syrian administration.

The scene intensifies the reality of what the Israeli government is working on at this stage.

A few days after the collapse of the Bashar al-Assad regime, the spiritual leader of the Druze community in Syria, Hikmat al-Hijri, stated that there is no agreement or approval with the new extremist Syrian regime and that it will work for our interests as a community, saying that the stage is “to be or not to be” and that he will take the community in the direction that suits it.

Yes. The residents and families of the town of Hadar in southern Syria issued a statement denouncing the visit, but it is feared that this statement is a drop in the bucket of a river flowing in the opposite direction.

Syria's ethnic diversity is deep rooted in history: Sunnis are the majority, followed by Alawites, Shiites, Christians and Druze. This is in terms of religions, but in terms of ethnicities, it is characterized by what characterizes the Levant, although the scene in Syria is more intense.

Israel sees all of this as its winning card. But how?

The concept of "David's Corridor" was gradually raised in the head of Zionism, when the Israeli army was wreaking havoc in Beirut, but its subsequent foundations were laid by former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres in his book titled The New Middle East. The road is primarily economic, but in the context of its creation, it requires the fragmentation of Arab countries, grinding some of them and dividing them.

David's Corridor starts from the occupied Golan and ends on the banks of the Euphrates in Iraq.


From the Golan, the corridor heads towards Quneitra, then to Daraa, to Suwayda, which it will follow along the Syrian-Jordanian border, a desert area located in the Homs governorate, up to the town of al-Tanf, a town that is currently under US custodianship, a town that is considered a triangular border between Syria, Jordan and Iraq, and even more dangerous as a border town for the supposed second Kurdish state.

The corridor will continue to advance towards Syria's Deir ez-Zor to reach the Syrian-Iraqi crossing of Albukamal, which, if Syria is partitioned, will become part of the territory of the Kurdish state, which seems unattainable with the Turkish blockade.

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Dr. Ahmad Al Hyari is a Political Researcher at Center for Strategic Studies - University of Jordan