Members of several Druze communities in southern Syria have said they want to live under Israeli rule rather than come under the dominion of “radical Islamists” after the collapse of the Assad regime.
An unverified video circulating on social media shows a gathering of Druze residents from the Syrian village of Hader in the buffer zone between Israel and Syria calling for the community to be annexed to the Israeli side of the Golan Heights.
“If we have to choose, we will choose the lesser evil. And even if it’s considered evil to ask to be annexed to the [Israeli] Golan, it’s a much lesser evil than the evil coming our way,” a man tells the crowd in Arabic, according to a translation by Times of Israel.
“That evil might take our women, might take our daughters, they might take our houses,” he says, according to the translation.
