Hader, and the villages surrounding it, are now under IDF control since troops entered on Sunday following the fall of Assad. Roughly 700,000 Druze live in Syria, with about 20,000 in the Israel-annexed Golan Heights adjacent to Hader. Another roughly 150,000 Druze live within Israel’s borders.
“We asked to be annexed to the Golan to preserve our dignity,” the man in the video says, adding that he speaks for the Druze community across the surrounding area of the Quneitra Governorate.
“We ask in the name of all the surrounding area to join our people in the Golan, and to live with freedom and dignity like our people are living [in Israel].
He urges that the Syrian Druze be freed from the “injustice and oppression” that was first inflicted upon them by the Assad regime, and which they fear will soon be imposed on them again by the “Isis-like” Islamist rebel groups.
“How many of us have died?” he asks. “We’ve given enough. We’re not willing to offer anything more.”
Druze are among several minority groups in Syria who have expressed fear over their future under Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a Sunni Islamist paramilitary organisation and an offshoot of Al Qaeda.
However, some Druze residents living in the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights area of Majdal Shams celebrated the news of the Islamist-led rebels’ capture of the Syrian capital.
