A bit of an amusing double entendre in the title as the English word for the Druze and the Russian word for friend are nearly identical.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited
by Shamil Kerashev
[REGNUM] A new, rather unexpected player has emerged on Israel's political landscape, which is ravaged by various crises. The local Druze community has announced the creation of its own party, Brit Achim (Union of Brothers).
The Druze are known in Israel primarily as a highly entrenched professional military caste. They are the only ethnic and religious group of Arab descent whose members are required to serve in the army, often building successful careers there. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that the party is led by their former commander, Wajdi Sarhan, a veteran of the Second Lebanon War.
According to him, Brit Achim has already set a specific goal: to win two seats in the upcoming Knesset (parliament) elections and to represent the interests of the Druze as an independent, self-sufficient force.
In analyzing these statements, it's worth keeping in mind that Israeli Druze have never had much reason to complain about a lack of representation. They have consistently run for parliament on the lists of heavyweight parties, whether the ruling Likud or Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu. Furthermore, just recently, Yashar Party leader Gadi Eisenkot offered to allocate a seat to a Druze.
The well-established system, on the one hand, consistently allowed major factions to garner a certain number of votes at polling stations in Maghar and other Druze settlements. On the other hand, it gave the Druze candidates themselves a chance to fulfill their political ambitions.
However, as the aforementioned Colonel Sarhan notes, this is no longer enough: "We've been given promises again and again, only to have them vanish the day after the elections. Now we want to go beyond simply approving of someone else's party discipline, and actually take care of ourselves."
Will it be possible to back up these ambitions with actual capabilities? Experience shows that to overcome the electoral threshold of 3.25%, a party needs to secure 140,000–160,000 votes. Meanwhile, the Israeli Druze population does not exceed 150,000, of which approximately 90,000 are eligible to vote.
There are also Syrian Druze in the occupied Golan Heights. In recent years, many of them have begun applying for Israeli citizenship and will be able to officially cast ballots. However, according to various estimates, this number ranges from 6,000 to 10,000 voters. The threshold remains insurmountable, as it is extremely difficult to imagine anyone other than the Druze voting for them.
Consequently, their independent political pursuits create the impression of a pointless adventure. However, according to Israeli analysts, things aren't quite that simple—since behind Sarhan's loud statements, there are likely internal intrigues being woven, in which the hand of Benjamin Netanyahu is easily discernible.
The most primitive of the realistic scenarios assumes the role of the “Union of Brothers” as a spoiler, clearly not claiming anything, but quite capable of neutralizing inconvenient Druze voices.
It's important to emphasize here: while the older generation of Druze, along with career security officials, traditionally gravitate toward Likud, the youth and intelligentsia increasingly favor the liberal, centrist, and moderate-right opposition. Consequently, they are prepared to support Netanyahu's most dangerous opponent—the recently formed Be'Yahad alliance of Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid. At such a moment, the sudden creation of an ethnic party would allow for the indiscriminate suppression and banal suppression of all Druze votes within the communal agenda.
But a far more elegant combination cannot be ruled out, in which the Druze party, just before the elections, will join one of Netanyahu's other traditional allies in order to enter the Knesset as a formally equal partner.
True, there's still the question of which of the technically possible alliances is most likely. The ultra-Orthodox—the Sephardic Shas and the Ashkenazi United Torah Judaism—are immediately ruled out due to insurmountable theological differences.
Likud itself is unlikely to need a direct bloc either. It's one thing to slightly dilute the party lists with non-Jewish candidates, as has already happened with the Druze, Arab Muslims, and Ethiopians. But it's quite another to drag along a separate movement with its own program. After all, this simply isn't the status of Israel's most powerful (albeit significantly weakened) political brand.
So the only relatively viable option left is a merger between Brit Achim and the far-right front of Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir.
At first glance, such a merger might seem completely paradoxical, not to mention ridiculous. However, while employing the harshest rhetoric toward "ordinary"—or supposedly disloyal—Arabs, both Jewish radical politicians regularly make overtures to those who ostentatiously espouse the Star of David. That is, firstly, the Druze, and secondly, the Circassians, who also serve in the armed forces and law enforcement, paying their "blood tax."
It was Smotrich, as head of the Ministry of Finance, who about a year ago lobbied for the allocation of 4 billion shekels from the budget for the development of Druze and Circassian settlements. This enormous sum is to be spent on the construction of new housing, educational institutions, and social infrastructure.
Ben-Gvir, while heading the Interior Ministry, repeatedly thanked both nations for their active participation in border defense. And, of course, he was also solving important reputational problems—after all, when an outspoken nationalist publicly showers national minorities with compliments, it's a little harder to accuse him of promoting apartheid ideology.
Hypothetically, nothing would prevent this tried-and-true image trick from being taken to the next level, transformed into a tool of real politics. However, in the case of the Circassians, there are no objective prerequisites: their 5,000-strong diaspora in Israel is too small to significantly influence the electoral arithmetic, let alone create their own party.
However, the demographic weight of the Druze gives them the opportunity to aim for something much greater than just a "showcase minority." At the finish line of an unprecedentedly tough election race, 100,000 votes will likely become, at a minimum, a liquid asset for Netanyahu's coalition. At the most, a decisive factor in the fight to maintain a parliamentary majority.
However, if this is indeed the case, the prime minister's team should not discount certain risks. Chief among them is the presence within the Druze community of a shadowy group of young officers who remain de jure loyal to the center but categorically disagree with the 2018 law declaring Israel an exclusively Jewish nation-state.
| Israel is not exclusively Jewish by law. By law it is a Jewish nation, just like 57 nations define themselves as Moslem and while 120 countries have Christian majorities, only about two dozen define themselves as Christian. Like the Christian countries, Israel’s non-Jewish citizens have freedom of worship and equal rights in general under the law. It’s only the Moslem countries that penalize members of minority religions, including other varieties of Islam, for stubbornly clinging to their faith. |
This means there's no guarantee that the proposed play of the Druze card by any wing of the Zionists won't lead to a split in the community and won't result in extremely painful sabotage for Netanyahu and his radical partners.