Will Syria’s Druze, Kurds & Alawites become Israel’s new allies? Past failures pose serious warnings

The fall of the Assad regime in Syria destroyed a hostile regime on Israel’s doorstep and opened the possibility of permanently changing the security situation on the northern front.

Israel reacted by conducting an intensive diplomatic initiative against Syria’s new, Islamist-dominated regime while reaching out to the country’s minorities – but it would do well to remember the past failures of similar ventures.

When the Assad regime disintegrated in December of 2024, Israel quickly took security precautions by seizing a buffer zone in Syrian territory and destroying nearly every piece of heavy military equipment left in the country.

The recent massacres of Alawite civilians on the Syrian coast, which proved the new regime can’t control its Islamist militias, have vindicated these precautionary measures.

Ever since, Israel has tried to combat international efforts to legitimize the new regime while striving to hamper President Ahmad al-Sharaa’s moves to centralize power.

The apparent goal of this policy is to keep the Syrian state, traditionally one of Israel’s main enemies, decentralized and weak.

One of Israel’s main tools in this diplomatic offensive has been a call-back to a historically significant but largely failed strategy: The “Alliance of Minorities,” which saw Israel trying to create alliances with the many other minorities in the Middle East to undermine the many pan-Arabist regimes at the time.

This strategy has its roots even before the Israeli state. Looking around them and seeing themselves as an island in a hostile sea of enemies, Israel’s founding fathers reached out to other minorities or states who, like Israel, were not Arabs or Muslims.

In an article titled “A people that shall dwell alone; is that so? Israel and the minorities alliance,” Israeli-Druze researcher Dr. Yusri Hazran described how Reuven Shiloah, the founding father of the Mossad, laid the foundations of the interconnected “Periphery Pact” and “Minorities Alliance” projects.

“According to Shiloah, the Arab nation was besieged by two rings, or circles. The first is external and involves non-Arab nations. The second is internal and consists of religious and ethnic minorities. Hence, the common denominator of Zionism, Israel, and both circles is antagonism to the radical Arab Nationalist Movement.”

“The alliance between Israel and these circles is grounded in the principle of shared hostility toward the Other, namely, ‘my enemy’s enemy is my ally.’”

An early example of this is the relationship that began as early as the 1930s with the Kurds of Iraq, who are mostly Sunni Muslims but not Arabs. Starting in the 60s, Israel supported the Kurds in their revolt against the Iraqi state, thus harming one of Israel’s most dangerous foes at the time.

In the outer circle, on the Arab world’s periphery, both Turkey (non-Arab but Sunni Muslim) and Iran (non-Arab and Shia), who are today seen as among Israel’s most strident foes, were at one time among its closest allies in the fight against the Arab regimes, for example, during the Iran-Iraq War.

The most consequential of Israel’s alliances was the one with the Maronite Christians in Lebanon, which also has roots in the mandatory period in the 1920s.

Decades of contacts culminated during the Lebanese Civil War in the 1980s, when Israel openly granted military support to the Maronite project of creating a Christian State, which Israel envisioned as a friendly buffer in the north.

However, the ensuing Lebanon War is seen as one of Israel’s most searing military and diplomatic failures.

The alliance with the Maronites dragged Israel into an internal civil war, causing military losses, political turmoil, a permanent stain on its moral reputation, as well as decades of domestic soul-searching, without much to show for it.

This largely put an end to Israel’s overt pursuit of the Minority Alliance Strategy.

Nevertheless, covert contacts with other minority groups continued in recent decades, and when an Islamist terror group took over the Syrian state, Israel’s leaders apparently decided it was time to reactivate the strategy on a smaller scale.

As an extraordinarily diverse society with dozens of ethnic and religious minorities, Syria indeed looks like an ideal staging ground for this idea.

However, several Middle East experts have quickly come out to warn against this Israeli policy.

Three groups have received particular attention in Israeli statements: The Druze, the Kurds, and the Alawites.

The most drastic Israeli step so far was to declare southern Syria a demilitarized zone and to promise to protect the Druze in the area. Both steps, in effect, made Israel a party to any potential Syrian civil war, threatening to drag it into a future conflict on behalf of the Druze.

David Daoud, senior fellow at the Foundation for Freedom of Democracies, warned that the lessons of the failure in Lebanon should not be forgotten.

Commenting on a report of some Syrian Druze raising the Israeli flag, he said, “This theatricality risks dragging Israel into a conflict not its own. What this video doesn’t show is that locals – Druze, for that matter – tore down and desecrated the Israeli flag afterwards. Echoes of 1982 Lebanon, no matter how it’s spun.”

In another post on 𝕏, he warned, “Israel's vocation isn't protector of regional minorities, nor does it have the resources to be that, and it will risk unnecessarily making enemies of Syrian Sunni Arabs who were, until these moves and statements, neutral – if wary – on Israel.”

“Israel’s interest is a de facto zone of influence along its border, and an understanding that it will not accept any targeting of the Druze that affects its security and domestic dynamics,” wrote Tony Badran, Tablet Magazine’s news editor and Levant analyst.

While many reports in recent weeks treated the three large minorities as one, their respective situations and Israel’s interests vis-à-vis each one, are very different.

Daoud noted that, unlike Israel, Iran just “spent a decade making inroads among Syria’s minority communities,” stressing that the regime has not abandoned its ambitions in Syria yet.

Israelis have a strong emotional bond with the Druze, due to the Israeli Druze’s strong identification with the state and their often heroic military service. In addition, they are located on Israel’s northeastern border.

However, the situation of Syria’s Alawites is very different. They are mainly concentrated on the Syrian coast, hundreds of miles north of Israel.

In addition, they were a pillar of the Assad regime, which was Israel’s mortal enemy for decades, and which in recent years was a quasi-Iranian puppet regime.

Taking their side in any conflict would only benefit Israel’s enemies by putting it on the same side as Iran and Hezbollah.

In fact, the recent fighting on the coast was started by Alawite militias, which, some reports suggest, are still in contact with and receive support from the Iranian regime.

Finally, the Syrian Kurds mainly live in northern Syria and along the Turkish border, even farther away from Israel than the Alawites.

As mentioned above, Israel has long had strong relations with the Iraqi Kurds – but not with their Syrian brethren, who, unlike their Iraqi cousins, are strongly influenced by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a terror group with Marxist-Leninist roots which is openly anti-Zionist.

Michael Doran, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, has long advocated Turkish-Israeli reconciliation as a strategic move to counter Iran, and in recent months has counseled Israel to seek “quiet understandings” with Turkey regarding Syria, instead of needlessly antagonizing the new regional power with declarations of support for the Kurds.

“All Turks hate the PKK, and in fact, most Kurds do too. Israel expresses its hostility to Erdogan and ‘Islamic’ Syria these days by expressing support for the Kurds, which in this context means supporting the PKK. This isn't wise, because Erdogan is united with the security establishment behind the war against the PKK... a pro-PKK policy from Israel will unite the Turks against Israel,” Doran, referring to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, warned in an interview with Israel Hayom.

“The smarter move is to seek a pragmatic understanding with the Turks in Syria, one where Syria becomes a buffer state, like Jordan. Israel should demand from the new Syrian government that Syrian territory not be used by Iran, neither against Israel nor to strengthen Hezbollah, and that it not be used for attacks against Israel. Such an agreement is easy to achieve with Turkey, but not if Israel supports the Kurds,” Doran added.

It certainly remains to be seen whether Turkey can be transformed from a hostile state into an ally in the near timeframe, and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed well-founded skepticism of Doran’s views in a recent interview.

However, it is clear that destabilizing Syria risks further antagonizing the Turks and providing them with more ammunition in the public relations fight against Israel, which is already in full swing.

Israel’s desire to establish connections and support Syria’s Druze, Kurds, and Alawites, who, as non-Arab minorities in the Middle East, faced many of the same hardships as the Jewish people, can certainly be justified morally and also holds some strategic possibilities.

However, since the failure of the Maronite alliance, Israel has largely refrained from trying to establish strategic ties with minority groups in enemy countries, and for good reason.

History shows that supporting a minority against a better-armed majority is very difficult and destabilizes their states with many unforeseen consequences. In addition, it is not clear at all that Syria’s minorities prefer an alliance with Israel over integration into the new Syrian regime, given credible security assurances.

Ironically, pursuing the minority alliance now risks benefiting Israel’s former allies turned foes, Turkey and Iran, while Israel has become part of the U.S.-led axis of so-called “moderate Sunni states,” including Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.

If Israel’s leadership has decided to reactivate this strategy, we can only hope it proceeds with caution, considers its tactical steps carefully, and keeps in mind the lessons of past failures.