In the quiet Galilee village of Julis, Israeli Druze volunteers are busy collecting food donations and gathering information to support members of the minority community in Syria reeling from deadly sectarian violence.
The colourful Druze flag hangs on a wall in a community centre alongside a sign in Hebrew that reads “Druze Community Emergency Room”, right next to the tomb of late spiritual leader Sheikh Amin Tarif — a pilgrimage site for followers of the esoteric offshoot of Shiite Islam.
“We’ve set up a situation room here to monitor what’s happening in Sweida and across the entire region, so that we can help our brothers and sisters there”, said Sheikh Mowafaq Tarif, the current spiritual leader of the Druze community in Israel.
Sweida, a Druze-majority province in southern Syria, saw a week of deadly clashes last month, which a war monitor said killed more than 1,400 people, mostly from the religious group that is spread across parts of Syria, Israel, Lebanon and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
The violence had ended with a ceasefire, but Tarif deplored the fact the the main highway to Sweida has remained blocked, effectively leaving Druze communities under siege.
Some of the volunteers in Julis are working a call centre to gather the latest information from inside Syria, while others coordinate aid collection and distribution, and a media group runs an online campaign to raise awareness to the plight of Syria’s Druze.
The first humanitarian aid convoy made it to Sweida on July 20 as calm returned, but further deliveries have been slow to reach the province where the International Committee of the Red Cross reported “extremely difficult circumstances”, empty shelves in shops and repeated power cuts.
According to the UN, some 175,000 residents of Sweida have been displaced.
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