MAJDAL SHAMS, Israel — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed retaliation during a visit to the scene of a rocket strike that killed 12 young members of a minority Druze community in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
“Our response will come, and it will be hard,” he said as he met with civilian and military officials in the town of Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights as fears grew that the incident, which Israeli officials blamed on rocket fire from Hezbollah, the powerful militant group in neighboring Lebanon, would push the region into a wider war. Hezbollah has denied it was behind the attack.
As the body of 11-year-old Guevara Ibrahim was carried through the streets, alongside pictures of the smiling boy, thousands of mourners took to the streets to pay tribute to the 12th victim of the strike that hit the soccer field. Some were dressed in traditional attire, wearing all black with white and red-topped turbans or white headscarves.
Twelve chairs covered with black cloth sat empty in the soccer field where the rocket hit. Elsewhere, abandoned children’s bicycles lay near a bomb shelter, which is a few feet away from the blast site but was out of reach for those caught off guard.
While the strike was the deadliest in Israel or in Israeli-controlled territory since Hamas’ Oct. 7 terror attack, according to Israeli officials, it hit a largely Druze community, which has a distinct place in the region.
NBC News looks at who the Druze are, and what the Golan Heights is.
Who are the Druze?
The deadly strike has cast a spotlight on the Druze community, a tight-knit sect, which dates back to the 11th century and draws from Christian, Muslim and Jewish beliefs, while incorporating elements of “Hinduism and even classical Greek Philosophy,” according to the Pew Research Center.
A unique religious and ethnic group that does not allow converts, it draws on a variety of traditions for its liturgy, including a belief in reincarnation and a six-volume Book of Wisdom.
Today, the Druze population is made up of more than 1 million people living primarily in Syria and Lebanon, where some have achieved high political office, as well as in Israel and Jordan.
There are about 150,000 members of the Druze community in Israel, according to the latest figures from the country’s Central Bureau of Statistics.
Around 25,000 live in the Golan Heights — a rocky plateau overlooking the upper Jordan River valley on the west — which was seized by Israel from Syria during the Six-Day War in 1967 before it was formally annexed in 1981. Israel subsequently offered them citizenship.
Syria has for decades demanded the return of the area, which sits around 40 miles southwest of the country’s capital, Damascus, and is still seen as occupied territory under international law and United Nations Security Council resolutions.
After the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in 2011, a growing number of Druze in the Golan Heights have sought Israeli citizenship and roughly 25% of the community now hold it, according to Rami Zeedan, an associate professor of Israel studies at the University of Kansas, who is Druze himself.
Zeedan, who is also editor of the Druze Studies Journal, said that some are “becoming more connected to Israeli society,” while others remain firmly rooted in their identities as Syrians.
Unlike members of Israel’s Arab community, most of whom are Muslim or Christian, Israeli Druze are not exempt from military conscription and a large number serve with the Israel Defense Forces. Druze who do not hold Israeli citizenship are not subject to mandatory service.
At least 10 Druze officers and soldiers have been killed since Oct. 7, according Israel’s Haaretz newspaper, which reported that eight died in combat in Gaza and two others were killed in the north of the country, where cross-border attacks between Israel and Hezbollah have occurred almost daily since the war in the Gaza Strip began in October.
Hezbollah has previously said it will stop attacking Israel if it ends its campaign in Gaza, where health officials say almost 40,000 people have been killed since Oct. 7, when 1,200 people were killed and around 250 others taken hostage by Hamas, according to Israeli tallies.
It is unusual for the group to deny an attack, but the militant group has nonetheless denied responsibility for the strike in Majdal Shams.
In a series of statements issued Saturday, Hezbollah did say it had struck nearby military targets in the Golan Heights. In one statement, it claimed to have used a Falaq-1 rocket, the same munition Israel says hit the soccer field. However, the timings of the Hezbollah statements do not neatly align with the strike. Hezbollah said the Falaq-1 rocket was fired at 5:20 p.m. local time, while the IDF says Majdal Shams was hit at 6:18 p.m.
Speaking at a press conference in Tokyo on Sunday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said there was “every indication” that the rockets were from Hezbollah, adding that he was “deeply saddened” by the loss of life.
Diplomatic efforts
With tensions rising, Monday saw a flurry of diplomatic activity ahead of anticipated Israeli retaliation.
The State Department said Blinken in a call with Israeli President Isaac Herzog on Monday “emphasized the importance of preventing escalation of the conflict and discussed efforts to reach a diplomatic solution to allow citizens on both sides of the border between Israel and Lebanon to return home.”
In Britain, where the government said Friday that it was dropping its predecessor’s query of the International Criminal Court’s jurisdiction to issue an arrest warrant for Netanyahu, Foreign Secretary David Lammy said in a post on X that he had spoken with caretaker Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati “to express my concern at escalating tension.”
Their comments came after Turkish President Reccep Tayyip Erdoğan suggested Sunday during a meeting of his ruling AK Party that Turkey could enter Israel as it had done in the past in Libya and Nagorno-Karabakh, Reuters reported. He did not expand on exactly what kind of action he was proposing.
Meanwhile, Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib said his country condemned the targeting of civilians in any part of the world, but rejected the idea that Hezbollah would have intentionally targeted a civilian site.
He also stressed that a major attack by Israel in Lebanon would only further escalate hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah and risk the eruption of a broader war.
Within the Golan Heights, said Zeedan of the University of Kansas, the pervading response to Saturday’s strike from the Druze community appeared to be a call for calm.
But, he said, they also wanted justice for the children killed.
Raf Sanchez reported from Majdal Shams and Chantal Da Silva from London.
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