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Once Rejecting Israeli Citizenship, the Golan Druze Are Now Getting Ready to Vote
(Ha'aretz) Adi Hashmonai - Walid, 35, a resident of Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights, said, "For 60 years, people here were afraid to speak out against the Syrian regime, fearing harm to their relatives across the border," before mentioning the massacre of Druze in southern Syria's Sweida province by government and Bedouin forces a year ago. "I feel we're nearing the completion of the Israelization of Druze society in the Golan - toward a new era." In 1981, when Israel annexed the Golan, most Druze there refused to accept Israeli citizenship, declaring loyalty to Syria. Three decades later, the Syrian civil war broke out and the number of Druze who requested Israeli citizenship steadily increased from single digits to hundreds annually. Still, by 2023, only a fifth of the Golan Druze were Israeli citizens. But in 2024, 572 residents from the four Druze towns requested Israeli citizenship, a number that ballooned to 3,750 in 2025. In the first half of 2026, 1,444 Druze from the Golan requested citizenship. Now 44% are citizens. The main reason was the massacre in Sweida and the Israeli airstrikes in the province and Damascus that followed. "I think the Druze in the Golan had an epiphany, mainly because Israel was the only one that stood by the Druze in Syria," says Salim Brik, a political scientist at the Open University of Israel. The sharp increase in Golan-Druze citizenship is probably also linked to the disaster of July 2024, when 12 children in Majdal Shams were killed by a Hizbullah rocket, he says.