Hundreds of Druze clerics crossed the Syria border into Israel on Friday for an overnight visit to celebrate the holiday of Ziyara at the tomb of Nabi Shuaib in the Lower Galilee, marking the second such visit since longtime Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad was ousted in December.
The roughly 650 clerics from the esoteric, monotheistic faith crossed the border on foot to celebrate the four-day holiday centered around the prophet Shuaib, identified with the biblical Jethro, which takes place on April 25-28 each year. Jethro’s tomb, near the village of Hittin, west of Tiberias, is the holiest site in the Druze religion.
The participation of the Syrian Druze was approved by Israeli authorities, although Abu Yazan, an official from Hader in the Syrian Golan Heights who asked not to be identified by his full name, said that the group had requested to stay in Israel for a week but were only granted one night.
The Syrian government was also notified of the plans but did not issue any response, according to a local Syrian news outlet.
With the Druze community mainly divided between Israel, Lebanon and Syria — where they account for roughly three percent of the population — the rare visit to the shrine also granted families the rare opportunity to reunite with their relatives, and, for some of them, to meet face-to-face for the first time.
Speaking to the Ynet news site, Beit Jann Regional Council head Nazih Dabbur said that he would be meeting cousins from Sweida, in southern Syria, and the Damascus suburb of Jaramana, for the first time.
“My 97-year-old father came especially to meet them, there’s nothing more exciting than that,” he said.
מאות אנשי דת דרוזים מסוריה מבקרים היום בישראל לרגל החג נבי שועייב. מבין שש מאות העולים לקבר יתרו, רבים הגיעו מאזור הר הדרוזים בדרום-מערב המדינה ומפרברי דמשק. זאת בשונה מהביקור הראשון במרץ, אז הגיעו בעיקר אנשי דת מאזור הגולן הסורי בקרבת הגבול. גורם שמעורה בפרטים אמר ל”כאן חדשות”… pic.twitter.com/3CQcFTtJ58
— כאן חדשות (@kann_news) April 25, 2025
Dabur’s cousin who arrived from Syria, Sheikh Ruslan al-Babur, told Ynet in tears that “we hope the ties continue and won’t be cut off, this is important to us.” He said Assad’s regime had “worked hard to disconnect” the Druze from their relatives in Israel, calling this “very cruel and inhumane.”
Sheikh Muafak Tarif, the spiritual leader of Israel’s Druze community, called the visit “historic.”
“The emotional reunions today attest more than anything to the unbreakable bond between Druze community members in any place,” he said, according to Ynet. “It’s impossible not to be moved by a meeting of brothers who haven’t seen each other in over 50 years, or grandparents who never saw their grandkids until tonight.”
Druze clerics and residents welcome visitng counterparts arriving from Syria in a bus through a border barrier guarded by Israeli soldiers, near the village of Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights, on April 25, 2025. (Photo by Jalaa MAREY / AFP)
The annual festival is traditionally marked with mass festivities at the site and gatherings by Drue leaders to discuss religious questions.
Friday’s pilgrimage followed a smaller, similar event last month, in which some 60 Syrian Druze clerics were authorized to visit the shrine, but returned to Syria that same day.
The pilgrimages were organized amid vocal Israeli support for Syria’s Druze community in the wake of Assad’s ouster, even as Jerusalem remains wary of Damascus’s new Islamist leadership.
Israel seized much of the strategic Golan Heights from Syria in a war in 1967, later annexing the area in 1981 in a move recognized by the US but not by most of the international community.
Following the ouster of Assad, Israel carried out hundreds of airstrikes on Syria and sent troops into a demilitarized buffer zone on the Syrian side of the border. Jerusalem has said this is a temporary defensive step, though Defense Minister Israel Katz has said troops will remain there “indefinitely.”
In early March, following a deadly clash between government-linked forces and Druze fighters in the suburbs of Damascus, Defense Minister Israel Katz vowed that Israel would not allow Syria’s new rulers to “harm the Druze.”
At around the same time, an Israeli government spokesman said that Israel had provided the Druze communities in Syria with 10,000 humanitarian aid packages in a show of the “bold alliance with our Druze brothers and sisters.”
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