A tiny Arab minority stands between Israel and Syria

“I don’t want to return," said Nirvana Yousef, 20 years old, whose grandfathers fought for Syria against Israel in the 1967 Mideast War. “We live a much higher quality of life here."

Israel is now trying to capitalize on that sentiment, hoping to use the community’s success in Israel to persuade its relatives across the border in Syria that their neighbor is a friendly force. It is part of a broader effort that Israel is making after Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s fall to help secure its border.

As Syrian rebels overtook Damascus, Israel’s military and political leadership rushed to meet with the leadership of the Druze, a 150,000-strong Arabic-speaking community in Israel that has strong familial and communal ties to the hundreds of thousands of Druze living in southern Syria. Around 20,000 of them live in the Golan Heights. Druze practice a closely held religion that formed as an early offshoot from Islam.

Both Israel and the Druze minority in Syria fear that despite the moderate messaging of Syria’s new Islamist leaders, they represent a serious future threat. To that end, Israel occupied the buffer zone between the two countries and in recent days destroyed Syrian military assets to prevent them from falling into potentially hostile hands.

Should Syria splinter or descend into further rounds of factional fighting, current and former Israeli officials say Israel could help protect Druze communities in Syria, and in turn, the Druze could act as a buffer against enemies wishing to encroach on Israel’s borders.

“Israel is looking for good neighbors, and the Druze don’t want anyone to threaten their existence, honor, land or religion," said Brig. Gen. (Res.) Hasson Hasson, a Druze and former senior Israeli military official.

Such a tightening of ties would be the continuation of a policy Israel established in the early years of the Syrian civil war. Between around 2011 and 2018, Israel established links with a variety of rebel groups near its border and gave them cash, food, fuel and medical supplies. Publicly, Israel said its efforts were strictly humanitarian.

Current and former Israeli officials, including high-ranking Druze officials, said Israel has already secretly acted to protect Druze in Syria during the civil war, but declined to provide details.

“We did it in the past, and we can do it in the future," said Hamad Amar, an Israeli Druze lawmaker. He stressed that Israel doesn’t want any Syrian land and that it wishes to live peacefully alongside Syria.

In 2017, amid fierce fighting in Hader, a Druze village across the border from Majdal Shams, Israel’s military said that it wouldn’t let Hader be harmed.

A video taken late last week that spread rapidly on social media showed a gathering of Druze in Hader at which people called for it to be annexed by Israel.

“Even if it’s considered evil to ask to be annexed to the [Israeli] Golan, it’s a much lesser evil than the evil coming our way," a speaker is heard saying, while asking people to record the event.

Those sentiments were roundly opposed by the leaders of Hader and other nearby villages in an official statement. They said the Druze wished to be a part of a united democratic Syria and that the video didn’t represent a majority of Hader’s residents. Israel’s own Druze leaders also expressed dissatisfaction with the calls for annexation.

“My sense is there’s a cautious wait-and-see approach. For now, they’re going with the flow of wanting to still be part of Syria, maybe a minority open to the possibility of joining up with Israel," said Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi, a Syria expert and fellow at the Middle East Forum, a Philadelphia-based think tank, who said he has been in touch with residents of Hader.

The village is now surrounded on three sides by Israeli troops after Israel occupied the Israeli-Syrian buffer zone following Assad’s ouster on Dec. 8.

The largest Syrian Druze community lives in Sweida, a region around 60 miles from Israel’s border.

“The issue of Hader is merely a distraction, nothing more, and it holds no value," said Taleb Halabi, a former English teacher in Sweida, who said he wished to live in a united secular Syria. “Those who communicate with Israel do not represent us or represent large groups of people."

Syria’s aspiring leader, Abu Mohammed al-Jawlani, met Syria’s Druze leaders on Dec. 16 and told them that he expected Syria to remain unified and all fighters integrated into the ministry of defense.

Eman Safady, an Israeli Druze journalist and expert on Middle East politics, said one vision for future cooperation is that Druze in Syria could come to work in Israel, which has a labor shortage.

“Many of the Druze in southern Syria are facing serious economic difficulties due to the ongoing consequences of the civil war," she said. “Working in Israel, where the economy is more stable, could provide them with a significant source of income and help rebuild their local economy."

In Majdal Shams, the blue and white flag of Israel flies on each municipal building. While Arabic is still the dominant language, most here now also speak Hebrew.

“I think I’m from Israel, not Syria," said Yousef, who works at a pub in Majdal Shams. She is part of the around 20% of Druze in the Golan Heights who have gotten Israeli citizenship, most in the past decade.

Hers isn’t a universal sentiment. All of the village’s statues, some recently decorated with the new three-star flag of a free Syria, celebrate their community’s historic role in establishing modern Syria in 1946.

“We are Syrian civilians living under Israeli occupation since 1967," said Majd Abu-Saleh, 66, a lawyer from Majdal Shams.

One of the village’s landmarks is a statue of Abu-Saleh’s grandfather, Sultan al-Atrash, a leader of the Arab revolt against the French rulers of Syria in the 1920s. It features the revolutionary atop a horse on its hind legs, thrusting his rifle into the air.

“We paid the blood for the independence of Syria," he said, emphasizing that he was expressing his own opinion.

As a vulnerable minority spread through Lebanon, Syria and northern Israel with no country of their own, Druze have traditionally maintained strict loyalty to whichever country they live in.

But that strategy is under threat as minorities in the Middle East have been persecuted and more vulnerable because of the breakdown of countries like Iraq and Syria, said Yusri Hazran of Jerusalem’s Hebrew University, who is Druze and researches minorities in the Middle East.

The internal dispute among Druze over whether to ally with Israel depends on if individuals believe in the safety of the territorial national state, he said.

“It’s about a vision," Hazran said.

Jawlan Abu-Saleh, 37, a lawyer from Majdal Shams and distant relative of Majd Abu-Saleh, said he feels closer to the Syrian people and their culture than Israel, but he felt disconnected from Syria during the civil war and wouldn’t want to lose his better quality of life.

Now he is torn about his own identity following the toppling of Assad.

“The fall of the Assad regime is a moment of truth for all the residents here about where they really want to live," he said.

Suha Ma’ayeh contributed to this article.

Write to Dov Lieber at dov.lieber@wsj.com