DAMASCUS: Hundreds of clerics from Syria’s Druze minority on Friday are heading to Israel where they will conduct a pilgrimage to a sacred shrine, the second such visit since longtime ruler Bashar Assad’s ouster.
The clerics from the esoteric, monotheistic faith, are to cross the border on foot, according to a Syrian official and a local news organization, despite Israel and Syria being technically at war.
The delegation will visit the Nabi Shuaib shrine in north Israel’s Galilee region, where an annual pilgrimage is held from April 25-28 each year.
Abu Yazan, the official from Hader on the Syrian Golan Heights, said that 400 clerics from his town and from the Damascus suburb of Jaramana will head to Israel after the Israeli authorities gave their approval.
Asking not to be identified by his full name, he said the trip was “purely religious” in nature.
Suwayda24, a news organization from nearby Sweida province, said some 150 Druze clerics from that area would also participate.
The group notified the Syrian government of its plan to go to Israel, though it received no response, the website added.
Unlike during a smaller visit to the shrine last month, the clerics will spend the night in Israel this time.
Abu Yazan, who is one of the participants, said that “we requested to stay for a week to visit the shrine” and other members of the religious community “but the Israeli side only authorized one night.”
The Druze are mainly divided between Syria, Israel and Lebanon.
They account for about three percent of Syria’s population and are heavily concentrated in the south.
Israel seized much of the strategic Golan Heights from Syria in a war in 1967, later annexing the area in 1981 in a move largely unrecognized by the international community.
After Islamist-led forces ousted Assad in December, Israel carried out hundreds of air strikes on Syria and sent troops into the demilitarised buffer zone of the Golan.
Israeli authorities have also voiced support for Syria’s Druze and mistrust of the country’s new leaders.
In March, following a deadly clash between government-linked forces and Druze fighters in Jaramana, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said his country would not allow Syria’s new rulers “to harm the Druze.”
Druze leaders rejected the warning and declared their loyalty to a united Syria.
Hundreds of Syrian Druze clerics head to Israel on pilgrimage
https://arab.news/2wm63
Hundreds of Syrian Druze clerics head to Israel on pilgrimage
- Hundreds of clerics from Syria’s Druze minority on Friday are heading to Israel where they will conduct a pilgrimage to a sacred shrine, the second such visit since longtime ruler Bashar Assad’s
Syria Kurds impose curfew in Qamishli ahead of govt forces entry
- The curfew came after Syrian security personnel entered the mixed Kurdish-Arab city of Hasakah and the countryside around the Kurdish town of Kobani on Monday
QAMISHLI: Kurdish forces imposed a curfew on Kurdish-majority Qamishli in northeastern Syria on Tuesday, ahead of the deployment of government troops to the city, an AFP team reported.
The curfew came after Syrian security personnel entered the mixed Kurdish-Arab city of Hasakah and the countryside around the Kurdish town of Kobani on Monday, as part of a comprehensive agreement to gradually integrate the Kurds’ military and civilian institutions into the state.
The Kurds had ceded territory to advancing government forces in recent weeks.
An AFP correspondent saw Kurdish security forces deployed in Qamishli and found the streets empty of civilians and shops closed after the curfew came into effect early on Tuesday.
It will remain in force until 6:00 am (0300 GMT) on Wednesday.
The government convoy is expected to enter the city later on Tuesday and will include a limited number of forces and vehicles, according to Marwan Al-Ali, the Damascus-appointed head of internal security in Hasakah province.
The integration of Kurdish security forces into the interior ministry’s ranks will follow, he added.
Friday’s deal “seeks to unify Syrian territory,” including Kurdish areas, while also maintaining an ongoing ceasefire and introducing the “gradual integration” of Kurdish forces and administrative institutions, according to the text of the agreement.
It was a blow to the Kurds, who had sought to preserve the de facto autonomy they exercised after seizing vast areas of north and northeast Syria in battles against Daesh during the civil war, backed by a US-led coalition.
Mazloum Abdi, head of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), had previously said the deal would be implemented on the ground from Monday, with both sides to pull forces back from frontline positions in parts of the northeast, and from Kobani in the north.
He added that a “limited internal security force” would enter parts of Hasakah and Qamishli, but that “no military forces will enter any Kurdish city or town.”
