When you have a platform like this, there’s temptation to ramble endlessly on anything and everything. There, I just did it; “endlessly on anything and everything” is not necessary.
But I feel this is important. I agree with this guy. I’m just going to cut and paste his Xweet in whole, with a link:
The Dangerous Illusion of a Druze Buffer: Israel’s Strategic Folly in Southern Syria
In response to my recent piece on X regarding Israel’s covert motivations in supporting the Druze of Syria’s Suwayda province, I’ve received numerous messages, including maps, purporting to show what some Israeli ministers envision. According to sources, this plan is being circulated by fanatical elements within the Israeli cabinet, particularly Ministers Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, who support creating an autonomous Druze-administered region along the Syrian-Israeli frontier. Their goal? A strategic buffer zone linking the Druze of Suwayda and Daraa to Israel via the Golan Heights.
This idea is not just dangerous, it is absurd. The Druze of Syria, numbering around 380,000, self-identify as al-Muslimīn al-Muwaḥḥidīn al-Durūz, a monotheistic Muslim sect. They are neither Israeli citizens nor Jewish, making Israeli intervention in their affairs both unwarranted and inflammatory.
To implement this “extra buffer,” over 2 million Sunni Arabs would have to be displaced. That’s not strategy, that’s ethnic cleansing. In the name of protecting a minority, Israel would commit a mass atrocity against a majority population. The ratio in the proposed area is 5 Sunnis for every 1 Druze. Any plan to force this kind of demographic restructuring would require the killing or forced removal of hundreds of thousands. In short: a genocide to prevent a genocide that hasn’t, and likely wouldn’t,occur.
This isn’t without precedent. From 1982 to 2000, Israel attempted a similar experiment in southern Lebanon under the guise of protecting the south Lebanon Christian minority. It ended in failure and gave birth to Hezbollah. And that was in a far smaller area with a far more fragmented demographic. What’s being proposed in Syria is 40 times larger, far bloodier, and exponentially more dangerous.
Fortunately, cooler heads seem to prevail within Israel’s own intelligence, military, and political institutions. Many key figures oppose this reckless scheme, recognizing that the strategic loss would far outweigh any perceived gain. International backlash, from Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, Doha, Ankara, Cairo, Amman, and across Europe, would be swift and severe.
Israel must remember the lessons of Lebanon. Its national security cannot be ensured by inaugurating chaos or fueling sectarian fires. Instead of aiding in the destruction of Syria’s fragile recovery, Israel would do well to extend a cautious diplomatic hand to the country’s new leadership. That, and not this madness, offers the only sustainable path forward.
Sit this one out, Israel.
Creating an imaginary buffer by committing real atrocities is not security. It’s suicide.
Why are the Israelis doing this? Wish fulfillment, Netanyahu, extremists who are drunk with power (air power is something Israelis are good at, as opposed to mundane things like watching a border), and relations with their Druze minority.
People have a tendency to see what they want to see. Over and over, the Israelis have been stung by their obsession with finding a natural ally in the Middle East (the Persians, the Kurds, now the Druzes).
Forget it. They have no allies. Like it or not (and I do not), the Sunni Muslims are the demographic majority in the Arab Middle East (with huge numbers of Shiites in all sorts of very inconvenient places). Israel can bulldoze its way to a temporary solution by routing the Sunni Muslims out of the Druze strongholds but it will blow up their faces, as Aimen Deen pointed out.
Even now I hear lunkheads wasting their breath about an alliance with the Maronites. Forget it, the Maronites are cooked, and Hezbollah, although temporarily humiliated, is still in the picture. Sad, but true.
Netanyahu - no comment. Extremists and the urge to atone for the failure of October 7 - no comment.
About Israel’s Druze minority. This is touchy. But getting involved in Syria to keep on their good side would be insane. It also illustrates that the relationship is fragile and transactional. When the Hezbollah rocket killed twelve Druze kids, Jitter (Jewish Twitter) went nuts about the death of “Israeli” children. Yoav Gallant called them “Israeli.” They are not, and were not. I wrote about that, here:
The Day Jitter Went Crazy
Jitter is my name for Jewish Twitter. By the way, I now call Twitter simply “X” because it’s easier and I don’t want to write, “X, formerly known as Twitter.” But Jitter fits.
The Buffer Illusion: Israel’s Druze Corridor Fantasy and the Limits of Geography
There is a geopolitical concept that often escapes the public’s understanding, not due to complexity, but because of the strange, obsessive way it is being applied by Israel’s current ultra-right-wing government: the notion of the “buffer zone.”
In principle, the idea is straightforward; create a buffer to protect your homeland. Logical enough. But when that buffer needs a buffer of its own, and that second buffer needs a third one, the strategy spirals into absurdity. What begins as a security measure morphs into a convoluted expansionist doctrine, where each layer of protection becomes an extension of occupation. It’s a game of strategic nesting dolls that soon loses all clarity.
Nowhere is this more evident than in Israel’s approach to southern Syria, particularly the Suwayda province, home to over 380,000 Druze. Some Israeli factions, with the support of elements within the current government, appear to be encouraging a faction of the Druze community - not all of them - towards the dream of carving out an independent Druze state in Suwayda, which could eventually link up with the Israeli-held Golan Heights.
On paper, this may sound plausible to some. But a quick glance at the map reveals a fatal flaw: standing between Suwayda and the Golan Heights is Daraa province, home to over 1.3 million Sunni Arabs. This is not just a minor obstacle, it’s a geographic and demographic impossibility. You cannot simply leapfrog over a million people, many of whom are fiercely tied to their ancestral lands, to establish a corridor connecting Suwayda to Israel.
To achieve such a feat would mean the forced displacement, or worse, of hundreds of thousands of Sunni clans and families who have lived there for centuries. The price? Potentially the lives of 50,000 Israeli soldiers, if one assumes such a corridor would be achieved militarily. The moral cost? Immeasurable. The strategic gain? Dubious at best.
Read the whole thing on X.
The urge to separate Israel from the dominant demographic realities of the Middle East is an exercise in futility and might end up destroying it.
You can run but you can’t hide.
It’s insanity and America will not support it. I can’t think of a better way to hand a victory to Israel’s enemies in the Democratic Party.
Addendum:
And it seems I was right about the motivation to give in to Israeli Druze pressure:
I’ve no idea how widespread this is. Let’s say it is widespread - that’s bad. Let’s say it’s not: Bibi is using this as a card. In either case, it’s a factor.
For Syria stuff, you should be reading Aimen Deen. He’s sane and knows his stuff.
I haven't seen any evidence that Israel wants to create a Druze buffer state - as Dean points out, the geography and demographics don't work - but they have been demanding a demilitarized southern Syria to avoid threats to Israel. Sunni massacring Druze in southern Syria suggest the area is not demilitarized.