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March 01, 2005

Lebanon, Syria and Israel.

Juan Cole has a fascinating piece up about Lebanon Realignment and Syria. The bulk of it lays out the history of the region, the religions involved and how they've interacted historically.

I found the section on the Druze particularly interesting. Cole links to an wikipedia entry on the Druze. Perusing that I discovered that the Druze treat men and women as equals, in stark contrast Muslims. While I knew there was a significant Druze population in Lebanon, I had no idea that there are Israeli Druze, or that many of them don't consider themselves Arabs. And that those who do consider themselves Arabs don't refer to themselves as Palestinians. As such they form a distinct subset of non-Jewish Israeli society.

You might recall that in early December of 2004 the Egyptians released an Israeli businessman who had been imprisoned there since 1996 on industrial espionage charges which were later changed to spying for Mossad. He is an Israeli Druze. The wikipedia entry goes into some detail about him.

Right now Lebanese Phalange (Christian sect), Druze and some Lebanese Muslims are in exceptionally rare alignment against Syrian occupation, while other Muslims continue to back Syria. Noteworthy is the Druze/Phalange alignment. They are historical enemies dating back to the French Colonial period. The Druze and Muslims fought against the Phalange during Lebanon's bloody civil war.

Beware simplistic pro-democracy rhetoric coming from Bush partisans. The situation in the area isn't half as simple as they'd have us believe. The Druze, the Phalange and the various Muslim factions all have their own motivations.

Posted by Kevin at March 1, 2005 12:02 PM