A delegation of Syrian Druse made a rare visit to Israel over the weekend for a pilgrimage to a shrine as Israel seeks to extend its influence inside Syria after the fall of the dictator Bashar al-Assad.
Both Israel and Syria have sizable minorities who belong to the Druse sect — an Arabic-speaking religious minority scattered across the Levant region. But with Israel and Syria formally at war for decades, Syrian Druse were generally unable to enter Israel to visit sites holy to their faith.
Sheikh Muwafaq Tarif, a Druse leader in Israel who helped organize the two-day visit, said roughly 100 people arrived on Friday in a convoy from Syrian territory. They also visited the Tomb of the Prophet Shuaib in the northern Galilee region of Israel, a site deeply revered in their faith.
“After being cut off for decades, to see our people arriving in our country — it’s a moment of great joy,” said Mr. Tarif, adding that he knew most of the visitors only from phone conversations, given the great difficulty of traveling between the two countries.
In Israel, many Druse hold Israeli passports, serve in the national military and are viewed as loyal “brothers in arms.” Others in the Golan Heights, territory that Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Middle East war, still hold Syrian identity and have Israeli residency cards, not citizenship.
Since the collapse of Mr. al-Assad’s dictatorship in early December, Israel has launched a barrage of airstrikes on Syria which it says are aimed at preventing hostile forces from massing near its borders. But the moves have prompted fears among Syrians of a protracted Israeli occupation of Syrian territory.
At the same time, Israel has reached out to the Syrian Druse, many of whom live in villages and cities in southern Syria, as potential partners.
The Druse militias in Syria are under pressure to integrate into a unified national military that the new president is trying to establish. Israeli officials have suggested that Israel could intervene on behalf of the Druse, including militarily, if they came under threat from government forces.
David Mencer, an Israeli government spokesman, said this week that Israel was “prepared to defend, if needed, the Druse population in Syria from the forces of the new regime.” The major Syrian Druse militias flatly rejected the offer.
Israel Katz, the Israeli defense minister, said this week that Israel was preparing to allow some Syrian Druse into Israel to work in the Golan Heights.
The Druse belong to a sect that broke away from Islam roughly 1,000 years ago, ultimately becoming a separate religion. Its members, now scattered between Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and northern Israel, have often found themselves on opposing sides of conflicts in the region.
Since the fall of Mr. al-Assad, Israeli troops have marched into Syrian territory, seizing a 155-square-mile buffer zone and bombarding targets across the country. Israeli officials have denounced the new government in Damascus for its Islamist leadership and said that their forces will remain in Syrian territory for the foreseeable future.
The new Syrian president, Ahmed al-Shara, has called on the international community to pressure Israel to withdraw. He has also maintained that his government poses no threat to its neighbors or to religious minorities like the Druse because Syrians are weary of war.
