Syrian leader vows justice after deadly clashes in Syria’s Druze-majority Sweida • FRANCE 24

Syrian leader vows justice after deadly clashes in Syria’s Druze-majority Sweida • FRANCE 24

And for more on these Israeli strikes on Syria, I’m joined once again by our international affairs editor, Philip Tur. Uh, Philip, can you tell us the latest of what’s going on in Syria at the moment? Right. Uh, well, the latest that we’re hearing is that the Syrian President Ahmed al- Shar has addressed the nation. was last night saying that local uh officials are going to be or local groups are going to be uh taking over ina to make sure that the situation there uh is peaceful and that government troops are withdrawing from the city. So it looks like we’re moving slowly towards a ceasefire agreement and a calming of the situation. Uh that is something that will be welcomed by the international community. That’s something obviously it’s going to be welcomed by the Drews community. But there is such tension in that region uh between the Bedwin tribes who are basically Sunni Muslim and the Drews community which is basically Shia Muslim. It’s going to take more than that for the situation uh to calm down. And there is also something else another element which does not help in all of that and there’s a lot of suspicion about where the uh Syrian government actually stands in all of this and what they are hoping to achieve. Now remember that there were attacks against another minority in Syria just recently in March, the Alawite minority uh by groups uh which were believed to be affiliated to the government. The government has rejected that idea. Uh 1,700 people were killed in those attacks. There’s a lot of worry on the side of the Drews that they could also be next in the firing line if you like by the Syrian government. The Syrian government says no, it wants to reunite the country. It wants to build a prosperous Syria. But there is a lot of mistrust between both sides and what we’ve seen over the past four days is not going to help rebuild that trust I think anytime soon. And what is Israel trying to achieve? So Israel has been uh involved in this basically for several reasons. The first reason is it wants to protect uh the Drews minority. There are many Drews based in Israel. They are used by the Israelis for example in the IDF, Israeli Defense Forces. They speak Arabic. They’re very useful. They’ve also been helping to maintain the border between Israel and Syria. For the Israeli prime minister, he doesn’t want to see any threat to that border zone. He also doesn’t want to see any threat from uh the new Syrian leadership. He doesn’t really believe that they’re being honest when they say they’ve turned the back on their uh Islamist past with the president Ahmed al-Shar known to have had links with al-Qaeda and Islamic State. That’s why Israel has been launching these bombing rays. They’re not new, the ones that we’ve seen yesterday. There were bombing rays in previous months to try to uh destroy weapons in Syria to prevent them from falling into the wrong hands. Uh but this is not helping in the peace process in Syria in trying to rebuild the country uh and to uh give uh the the buoyancy and the trust in the new regime that it needs because it really is still just in its influence in its infancy having just taken power uh since last December. Thank you very much for that, Philip

FRANCE 24’s Philipe Turle on the latest developments in Syria’s Druze-majority Sweida.
#Syria #Druze #Israel

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