“We are ready to die for our brothers in Syria!” shouted Druze demonstrators in rallies across northern Israel in June 2015. “We will cross the border to Syria to defend our brothers,” others exclaimed, alluding to the deteriorating security situation of Druze villages as a result of the Syrian Civil War.Footnote 1 Chanting similar slogans and waving the five-colored Druze flag, thousands of Druze citizens of Israel demonstrated in their villages throughout the north of the country.Footnote 2 The Syrian Civil War put Israeli Druze between a rock and a hard place. While officially Israel has claimed it remained neutral vis-à-vis this war, reports in Arab media, which many Israeli Druze follow, have long argued that Israel helps Jabhat al-Nusra (al-Nusra Front) and other opposition groups in their struggle against the regime of Bashar al-Asad, not out of love for anti-Asad forces but in order to pour oil onto the sectarian fire in the country.Footnote 3 Israel has publicly admitted to providing medical assistance to Syrian opposition groups, including Islamists, who are fierce opponents of the Druze (and the regime) in Syria. The Israeli Druze community's sense of brotherhood and blood ties with coreligionists in Syria compelled many to call on the Israeli government to intervene and protect the Druze villages in Syria, in particular those in close proximity to the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights. Some Druze officers who serve in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) threatened to shed their uniform and join the fighting in Syria.Footnote 4 Many other Druze appealed to the government as “loyal citizens of the country” to protect their brothers in Syria. One of these, a retired IDF colonel, summarized this view in a televised interview carried out as he participated in a demonstration in the village of Yarka: “It's about time that Israel paid its debt to us,” he stated. “We don't have to, but we should help the state. But the state needs to help us as well. . . . Just as you fight for every Jewish child we fight for every Druze baby.”Footnote 5
The Syrian Civil War has heightened sectarian identities and anxieties throughout the Middle East, amplifying social and political crossborder affiliations, including those of the Druze who are divided by the borders of Lebanon, Syria, and Israel (with a small minority in Jordan). In fact, despite the centrality and importance of bounded states in the political order of the post-Ottoman Middle East, many residents of this vast region maintain crossborder ties through marriage, licit and illicit trade, and religious practices, to name a few examples. Be that as it may, only in the past few decades have scholars of the post-1920 Middle East begun questioning the “nation-state” as the natural geographical and political unit of analysis, by challenging what John Agnew termed “the territorial trap of the state,”Footnote 6 and by bringing to light substate, suprastate, and trans-state dynamics.Footnote 7
Taking Druze citizens of Israel as a case study, this article analyzes their relationship with their coreligionists in Lebanon and Syria before, during, and after the Israeli invasion and occupation of South Lebanon in 1982–2000. It sheds light on how changing spatial scales—a result of the opening and closing of the Israel–Lebanon border—have transformed their social, political, and cultural lives. Furthermore, the article draws broader conclusions about spatial practices of communities that, like the Druze, pose a potential challenge to the ideal of the bounded nation-state as the ultimate geographical and political territorial unit for its citizens. Since the mid-1990s “scale” has gained much attention in the field of geography. Geographers have debated its meaning and use in theory and practice, and the only point on which they seem to have reached a consensus is that “scale remains a troubling and chaotic concept.”Footnote 8 My interest here is not to contribute to this debate or to offer my own definition of “scale,” but rather to integrate geographical insight about scale into our historical analysis of spatial perceptions and practices of Druze citizens of Israel and of other communities in the Middle East. Generally, in political and human geography scale is used to represent the many ways in which political power is spatially organized within and across the state's territorial units such as the city, the region, the country, and the globe, and it has long been agreed that these spatial scales are not hierarchical.Footnote 9 The human geographer Richard Howitt argued that scale has three facets: size, level, and relation.Footnote 10 For him, it was the relational dimension of scale that provided depth and meaning to this concept. “By thinking about aspects of scale as relation,” Howitt writes,
we may begin to fill in some of the gaps left by a too-narrow focus on size and level as metaphorical facets of scale. Clearly, when dealing with complex national geographies (geographical totalities analysed at a national scale), we need to consider a number of relations between geopolitics, territory, structure, culture, history, economy, environment, society and so on. Explaining just what makes the term “national” an appropriate scale label in a particular circumstance, therefore, requires us to address these relations precisely. That is, it is these relational, dialectical webs that make the word “national” a sensible metaphorical label for examining certain sorts of geographical totalities.
Like Howitt, I am interested in the relational, nonhierarchical facet of scale. But rather than thinking about relations at the national level as Howitt does in the example he provides, I would like to use relations to study both state and suprastate scales. In other words, it is the spatial manifestations of the relationships between Druze citizens of Israel and the state, on the one hand, and between them and their Lebanese and Syrian coreligionists, on the other hand, that I wish to explore. I propose using a new analytical concept that I term “hybrid spatial scale” to help us understand communities such as the Druze that operate on multiple levels of spatial and territorial scales. Also central to my discussion is an exploration of the way the state itself responds to the challenge of a community whose members insist on operating at a spatial scale that seemingly undermines the state's purported exclusive authority over its citizens. It is here that a third, integrated or hybrid, scale becomes useful, for it describes the place where the Druze and the state's spatial aspirations and practices meet, at times in conflict, at other times in agreement, and always in flux.
My analysis is also inspired by insights from the field of border studies that regard border populations as communities not only living along the meeting place of two polities, but also forming a third spatial scale that, in the words of Chicana feminist theorist Gloria Anzaldúa, constitutes “the lifeblood of two worlds merging to form a third country—a border culture.”Footnote 11 Druze citizens of Israel are a borderland population in at least three ways. First, a majority of them live in close proximity to the border with Lebanon and Syria. Second, as with many borderland populations, they are separated from other members of their community (in Lebanon and Syria) by a border. Third, and related to the arguments laid out in this article, they live in at least three nonhierarchical and nonexclusive spatial scales: one defined by innercommunal dynamics, the second defined by their relationships with the State of Israel, and the third characterized by their sense of belonging to the suprastate space inhabited by the Druze community in general.
Before delving into the core of my study, an explanation of my choice of case study is warranted. The eighteen years of Israel's occupation of South Lebanon are unique in the history of the Arab–Israeli conflict in that an “alienated border”Footnote 12 was open, facilitating crossborder interaction at a level unmatched since the 1948 war. During these years, Israel controlled parts of Lebanon and enabled the reemergence of a reality that had existed before 1948, with thousands of South Lebanese crossing the border to Israel on a daily basis and Israelis crossing the border to Lebanon, although in much smaller numbers (troops aside). In fact, when considered from a longue durée perspective, these eighteen years, as far as border life is concerned, were in many ways more “normal” than the preceding years from 1948 to 1982. Historically, southern Lebanon and northern Palestine have always been connected geographically, politically, and socioeconomically, and it was only the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 that put an abrupt end to this spatial reality.Footnote 13 Paradoxically, perhaps, the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 facilitated the reconnection of southern Lebanon with northern Israel/Palestine and the partial resumption of spatial practices by Druze in bilād al-shām that preceded the establishment of the State of Israel.
Finally, two notes on methodology. First, the article focuses only on Israeli Druze, intentionally excluding Golan Heights Druze who have lived under Israeli occupation since 1967. Unlike Israeli Druze, most Golan Heights Druze are not citizens of Israel, and almost none of them serve in Israel's security forces. Consequently, their relationship with the state is utterly different from that of Druze citizens of Israel who, as the populist cliché goes, signed a “blood oath” with the Jewish state. As my prime interest here is an analysis of spatial practices of citizens and the state's role in responding to and shaping these practices, the Golan Heights Druze, albeit a fascinating case in and of themselves, require a separate study. Also, I have largely overlooked regional as well as social and political variations among Israeli Druze—the substate spatial scale—because my purpose here is to show how their spatial perceptions and practices toward their coreligionists in Syria and Lebanon have brought them together even though Israeli Druze are divided on many other issues, both internally, within the community, and externally, in their attitudes toward the state.
Second, part of the article is based on semistructured interviews I conducted with twenty Druze (eighteen men and two women) who live in three villages (Yarka, ʿIsfiya, and Hurfish). I chose these particular villages because they are located in three different regional Druze village clusters, providing a wide geographical representation of the Druze community in Israel. Most of my interviewees were men because the crossborder dynamics I describe occurred mostly among men. When women did cross the border to either side they had to be escorted by male family members because of Druze gender norms. Finally, many of my interviewees asked to remain anonymous; for the sake of consistency I chose to keep all interviewee names unidentified.
The article begins with a brief description of Druze communal ties. It then presents a discussion of spatial regional practices of Druze in bilād al-shām in general and in Palestine before 1948 in particular. This is followed by an examination of the impact of the 1948 border closing and its reopening following the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. I then discuss the closing of the border in 2000 and its consequences for Druze communal life in Israel. The article concludes with an analysis of the dynamics between state and suprastate scales as manifested in the case of Israeli Druze. It also highlights the significance of this case for understanding spatial practices of communities in the Middle East that, like the Druze, exist and operate on multiple political and social scales.
THE COPPER TRAY
The Druze, a heterodox religious community that split from a branch of Shiʿi Islam in the 11th century, have been living for centuries in the region historically known in Arabic as bilād al-shām, which today comprises Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel, and the occupied Palestinian territory. Despite their geographical dispersion, they have managed to retain a strong sense of shared communal identity through their social and religious customs. The second creed of their faith—ḥifẓ al-ikhwān (protection of brothers of the faith)—obliges them to remain loyal to their coreligionists before any other commitment.Footnote 14 This creed has been buttressed by other social and religious practices that facilitate the preservation of a strong sense of communal identity. For centuries, the most important center of Druze religious learning has been Khalwat al-Bayada (khalwa or khilwa is a Druze religious sanctuary, or house of communion) near Hasbaya in today's Lebanon. Many Druze men who wish to join the clergy of the community study there for years before returning to their villages to serve as ʿuqqāl (sing.ʿāqil)—learned men of religion—and hold important political roles in their respective communities. Khalwat al-Bayada has thus functioned as a hub for all Druze communities; this is where they have met coreligionists from other regions and enhanced their sense of communal belonging. Other religious locales in Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine, such as graves of saints (maqāmāt, sing. maqām), have also functioned as social hubs, but on a mass scale. On their feast date, thousands of Druze perform pilgrimage rituals (ziyārāt, sing. ziyāra) at these sites and meet coreligionists from other villages and regions. For example, the grave of Nabi Shuʿayb in today's Israel was an important pilgrimage site until 1948 not only for Palestinian Druze but also for Druze from Syria and Lebanon. In Lebanon, the grave of Nabi Ayyub (in Niha, the Shuf Mountains) served a similar function for Druze from Palestine and Syria as well as for Lebanese Druze. Finally, extended Druze families (ḥamāiʾl, sing. ḥamūla), one of the most important communal identifiers for the sect, are dispersed across regions and villages, tying members of all ḥamāiʾl into one transterritorial social unit that defies state and other political boundaries.
It should be remembered, however, that these strong social ties have occasionally been interrupted. One famous case is the historic conflict between two Druze factions identified with the Qays and Yaman clans, which culminated in the 1711 ʿAyn Dara battle. This battle led in turn to the departure of thousands of Yamani Druze from Mount Lebanon to the Hauran, and to the formation of the large Druze community that today inhabits the Jabal Druze area in southern Syria.Footnote 15 Internecine Druze conflicts in Lebanon have persisted to this day, as manifested in the rivalry between the Junblatti and the Arslani/Yazbaki camps.Footnote 16 In pre-1948 Palestine and in Israel thereafter, Druze communal life has also been marked by disagreements and rivalries over religious and political leadership, at times deteriorating into violence.Footnote 17 Israeli Druze, particularly during the past twenty years, have been divided over questions of identity and their relations with the Jewish state. We will return to this point later in the article. For now, suffice it to note that a growing number of Druze have been challenging the cooperation of their leadership with Israel and have identified themselves with Palestinian nationalism, calling on young Druze men to refuse conscription to Israeli security forces.Footnote 18 Still, despite these internal disagreements and feuds, Druze's self-perception of their communal solidarity, even if not in line with reality at all times, continues to be characterized by the popular saying that “the Druze are like a copper tray. Wherever you hit it, the whole tray reverberates.”Footnote 19
THE MANDATE YEARS: STATE AND SUPRASTATE SCALES
The establishment of Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon after World War I posed restrictions on movement for the first time, not only for the Druze but for all residents of these newly founded polities. Still, crossborder exchanges continued to be the norm, even between Palestine under the British Mandate and Syria and Lebanon under the French Mandate.Footnote 20 A Zionist report from 1944 on the relationship between Palestinian Druze and their Syrian and Lebanese brothers noted that not only did the new boundaries not disrupt their strong communal ties but, thanks to an improved transportation infrastructure, these ties were actually strengthened.Footnote 21 Thus, during the Mandate years (1920−48) communication among Druze communities continued unabated, often disregarding the new political reality of the creation of Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine. For example, in 1933 a prominent Druze religious leader from Lebanon attempted to settle a dispute between two Druze factions in Palestine,Footnote 22 and in a different dispute it was a Druze delegation from Syria that negotiated a truce ( ṣulḥa) between two rival factions in the Palestinian village of Shifaʿamru.Footnote 23 Conversely, in 1941, when clashes between two Druze factions in Syria broke out, the spiritual leader Amin Tarif (more on him below) headed a Druze delegation from Palestine that, together with a Lebanese delegation, negotiated a truce between the rival parties.Footnote 24 It is noteworthy that Amin Tarif maintained close ties with both Lebanese and Syrian Druze through reciprocal visits, and that in general he accepted the religious authority of Lebanese spiritual leaders as well as the political leadership of the Junblatt family from Mukhtara in Lebanon.Footnote 25 For Palestinian Druze, access to their coreligionists in Syria and Lebanon was crucial. Historically, Palestinian villages were perceived as on the margins of Druze communal life. As such, Druze community leaders in Palestine depended on and sought legitimacy from leading Druze families from Lebanon (and to a lesser extent from Syria).Footnote 26 Finally, crossborder pilgrimages to religious shrines continued throughout the Mandate years, including visits of Syrian and Lebanese Druze to the shrine of Nabi Shuʿayb in Hittin, Palestine.Footnote 27
Thus, until 1948, Palestinian Druze were closely tied socially, religiously, and politically with their Druze coreligionists in bilād al-shām.Footnote 28 This crossborder reality was in fact the norm in the heterogeneous Arab population of northern Palestine, southern Lebanon, and southwestern Syria. Sunni, Shiʿi, Druze, ʿAlawi, Maronite, Greek Catholic, and Greek Orthodox communities lived side by side, straddling political borders and adapting to life on local, state, and suprastate scales, which, as I argued earlier, did not necessarily operate independently of each other.
1948 AND THE CLOSING OF THE BORDER
This situation changed drastically for the Druze in Palestine in 1948, with the establishment of the State of Israel. Much has been written about Druze integration into the State of Israel, their recognition by the state as a separate ethnoreligious community, the conscription of their men to Israeli security forces, and their—depending on one's perspective—collaboration or cooperation with the Jewish state.Footnote 29 Less attention has been devoted to the consequences of Israel closing the borders with its Arab neighbors in 1948 to its Druze citizens, who could no longer maintain normal ties with their coreligionists in bilād al-shām. Two examples suffice to illustrate this point. As mentioned, until 1948 many religious leaders of the community studied in Khalwat al-Bayada in Lebanon. This was not only the most important place to learn the secrets of the faith; it also played a crucial role in strengthening social and political ties among all religious leaders from across the Druze-inhabited regions. The most distinguished example from Palestine/Israel is that of the aforementioned Shaykh Amin Tarif from Julis, who studied in Khalwat al-Bayada from 1911 to 1918, returned to his village as an ʿāqil, and established himself as the most important religious and political authority for Druze in Palestine (and from 1948 in Israel) until his death in 1993.Footnote 30 From 1948 to 1982, Druze who wanted to study their faith and join the stratum of the ʿuqqāl, now under Israeli control, were no longer able to travel to Khalwat al-Bayada. Consequently, they suffered from two distinct disadvantages in comparison with their peers in Syria and Lebanon. First, since 1948 learned religious Druze men in Israel had inadequate training and superficial religious knowledge. Israeli Druze tried to compensate for this by establishing their own centers for religious study, but these centers could not match the depth and prestige of the studies offered in Khalwat al-Bayada. Second, they were unable to form the social and political ties that studying in Lebanon traditionally provided. In fact, they were cut off from the most important religious, social, and political location for the consolidation of Druze leadership in bilād al-shām.
The second example of the consequences of the 1948 border closing relates to one of the most important articles of faith of the Druze religion: reincarnation or transmigration of souls (tanāsukh or taqammus). The Druze belief in reincarnation assumes that with physical death the soul is immediately transferred to the body of a newly born Druze.Footnote 31 It is common to find Druze who can tell you about families to which they belonged in former incarnations. Many Druze whose past incarnation is reveled to them (often in a dream or moment of epiphany) search for their previous family so as to “reestablish” familial ties with them. In his book To Be a Druze, Fuad I. Khury explains that the belief in reincarnation continuously creates positive and amicable relationships between families, and is the most important reason for the internal cohesiveness of the Druze.Footnote 32 Rabbah Halabi, a Druze citizen of Israel who researched identity formation among Israeli Druze students, noted that most of his interviewees said that belief in reincarnation constitutes the most important part of their Druze identity.Footnote 33
Until 1948 belief in reincarnation served as a connection of sorts between Palestinian Druze and their coreligionists in Lebanon and Syria. A Druze from Palestine could, for example, have a dream about his or her previous family from a village in Lebanon or Syria and subsequently travel to find and pay tribute to this family, thus adding to the strong sense of crossborder communal attachment among Druze.Footnote 34 However, from 1948 onwards, this practice was no longer possible for Druze in Israel. The extension of family ties through reincarnation could only be practiced within the boundaries of the new state.
These two examples offer us a glimpse into some of the social consequences of the 1948 border closing. Israel's policies toward the Druze from 1948 onwards only increased the separation between the communities. Through mandatory service of Druze men in the IDF and institutional recognition of the Druze as a distinct, non-Arab, ethno-religious community, the Druze in Israel became evermore disconnected from their brothers and sisters in Syria and Lebanon.Footnote 35 This separation was further reinforced by political processes in those two countries. Syria and Lebanon developed different laws to regulate Druze communal life, which led to legal and political differences among all Druze communities, corresponding to the state in which they resided.Footnote 36 Additionally, in both countries Druze came to identify with Arab nationalism and, hence, with strong anti-Israeli sentiments.
Thus, Israeli Druze were spatially “suffocated.” They lost the ability to communicate on a regular basis, not just broadly with coreligionists, but often with members of their extended family. Occasionally, when an important event in Syria or Lebanon affected Druze there, Druze in Israel would respond by making a public statement or having a gathering to express support for and identification with their co-religionists across the border. However, physical and direct communication between the communities all but ended. As one of my interviewees explained, Israeli Druze “became accustomed to thinking that their world ends in the village of Hurfish,”Footnote 37 the most northern Druze village in Israel, near the Lebanese border.
Interestingly, it was often Israeli military activities and territorial expansion that created opportunities for Druze to break this spatial confinement. This was notably the case when Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria during the 1967 war, leaving four Druze villages intact under Israeli occupation and expanding the territorial and social space of Israeli Druze for the first time since 1948. This was also the case when, during the October 1973 war, Israel temporarily occupied additional Syrian territories, which it eventually returned under the June 1974 Disengagement Agreement. During the eight months of occupation, Israeli Druze, often accompanied by state and military officials, frequented the village of Hader inside the occupied “enclave” in Syria as individuals and as members of official delegations headed by Amin Tarif and other Druze dignitaries.Footnote 38 The Israeli press reported that “in the Druze house of prayer in the village [of Hader] family members and coreligionists who had not seen each other for twenty-five years [since 1948] met with hugs and kisses.”Footnote 39 The presence of state representatives in this meeting heightened the tension between two scales: the supranational scale sought by the Druze, which at that moment gave priority to sect and family over state, and the national scale emphasized by the Israeli civilian and military officials, who gave a strong statist context to these emotional meetings between family members. According to the Israeli press, after Israel's withdrawal from the enclave, about twenty Syrian Druze from Hader remained in Israel. Ten of these were young women who had married Druze men from the Golan Heights and villages inside Israel proper.Footnote 40 We will see below that marriages at times of temporary territorial expansion would recur during the Israeli occupation of South Lebanon.
THE 1982 WAR AND THE OPENING OF THE ISRAEL–LEBANON BORDER
Far more than the 1967 and 1973 wars, Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982 provided Israeli Druze access to the political, religious, and social heart of the Druze sect in the entire Middle East. For generations Lebanese Druze have been revered by their coreligionists for their religious learning, social cohesion, and political centrality in the Land of the Cedars.Footnote 41 “Lebanese Druze were and still are the ones who mark the road, and we [Israeli Druze] are the ones who walk on it,” wrote the author Salman Falah in a series of essays on Lebanese Druze in the Israeli government–sponsored newspaper al-Yawm (The Day).Footnote 42 Indeed, one would be hard-pressed to overstate the consequences of the opening of Lebanon for Druze from Israel. As soon as Lebanon was occupied by the IDF, Israeli Druze began frequenting the site of Khalwat al-Bayada as well as other Druze religious and political centers in South Lebanon and the Shuf Mountains. Shaykh Amin Tarif was among the first to visit Khalwat al-Bayada,Footnote 43 and established ʿuqqāl as well as novices began studying in the place. Between 1982 and 2000 there emerged a new generation of Israeli Druze ʿuqqāl who acquired their religious training in Khalwat al-Bayada. Nissim Dana (more on him below)—who, in his capacity as the staff officer of Israel's Ministry of Religion, was in charge of granting permits to visit Lebanon for religious reasons—estimates that during the eighteen years of Israel's occupation of South Lebanon he issued between 100 and 150 permits annually for Israeli Druze to cross the border for religious studies.Footnote 44
Before 1948 students from Palestine were housed in a building in Khalwat al-Bayada called al-Safadiyya (after the city of Safed, which in the Ottoman period had been a provincial town and in 1920 became part of Mandatory Palestine). In 1982 ahl al-ṣafad (the “people” of Safed) returned to al-Safadiyya and for eighteen years studied with their Syrian and Lebanese coreligionists. One of my interviewees, who had studied there during 1987−88, explained the importance and consequences of the resumption of studies in this khalwa:
If you draw a comparison, before Lebanon [the war of 1982] very few religious men really knew the [religious] texts by heart. [Very few] had a real religious education, not just religious men going to the khilwa for half an hour, an hour, and then returning home. [Rather,] religious men who know the text they read. Unequivocally! This is why I said that it [Khalwat al-Bayada] was the most important place to study the Druze religion.Footnote 45
Slowly but surely a new stratum of ʿuqqāl was formed. Since most students who attended al-Bayada were young, at the time of this writing many have reached a level of seniority in their spiritual and political leadership, influencing much of Israeli Druze public discourse. Furthermore, the number of religious men has increased significantly. While it is impossible to know exact numbers, several interviewees noted that from 1982 onwards, many more young Druze men were joining the ʿuqqāl while still maintaining their modern lifestyle, including their profession.Footnote 46 Thus, the number, age, and way of life of the religious men's stratum changed. In fact, this generation has also transformed the physical appearance of the ʿuqqāl in Israel by adopting the Lebanese Druze dress code. Whereas before 1982 learned Druze men wore a qumbāz, a long robe with long sleeves and side slits that covered the entire body from neck to toe, graduates of al-Bayada wear a sharwāl (loose trousers) and a salṭa (a type of jacket), emulating the dress code of Druze ʿuqqāl. Young Israeli Druze, who since 2000 have not been able to study at al-Bayada, still follow this new dress code.
The opening of Khalwat al-Bayada to Israeli Druze affected not only religious men, but also laymen, including senior officers in the IDF. During the Israeli occupation of South Lebanon, the army deployed many Druze officers in the Lebanon Liaison Unit (known by its Hebrew acronym, YAKAL) because of their knowledge of Arabic and familiarity with local customs. One of these officers was colonel Muhammad ʿIzz al-Din, who in 1991, before completing his military service in Lebanon, paid a visit to Abu Salman Husayn Darbiyya,Footnote 47 one of the distinguished shaykhs in Khalwat al-Bayada, to receive his blessings. When asked about his feelings towards the Druze in the khalwa, ʿIzz al-Din replied,
This is my sect [ʿedah]. I love them. It is a fact that I am here; it is true that I live far away from here. But I feel I belong to this place emotionally, especially when I visit the shaykh here; I feel the faith, the religion, the love of the sect. I simply feel at ease. Every time I wanted peace of mind I used to come here.Footnote 48
Social consequences of the opening of Lebanon to Israeli Druze extended beyond Khalwat al-Bayada. Those who believed that their families from previous incarnations lived in Lebanon were able to cross the border and search for them,Footnote 49 and those whose familial ties had been severed since 1948—given that extended Druze families are divided among Lebanon, Syria, and Israel—were able to visit family members and reestablish relations.
Moreover, hundreds of Lebanese Druze found jobs in Israel, especially in Druze villages. One interviewee told me about a Druze man from Hasbaya who, during the 1980s and 1990s, worked in construction for her family in their village inside Israel. He brought with him his expectant wife, who gave birth in a hospital in Nahariya, Israel. Later my interviewee and her parents traveled to Hasbaya to visit him and his family. This was an opportunity for her, she explained, to search for her own family from a previous incarnation. She had known since childhood that her soul transmigrated to her current incarnation from a woman in the town of ʿAleyh, southeast of Beirut. Unfortunately, she was unable to reach ʿAleyh because of security concerns and had to return home without experiencing this unique form of family reunification.Footnote 50
This and other testimonies I collected tell a fascinating story of crossborder interaction of unprecedented scale between Israeli and Lebanese Druze: the latter worked in Druze villages in Israel, Druze delegations from Lebanon visited sacred sites in Israel,Footnote 51 Israeli Druze reconnected with their families in Lebanon, and strong social and economic ties were formed across the two sides of the border, including dozens of crossborder marriages, always with Israeli Druze men marrying Lebanese Druze women and settling in their villages inside Israel.Footnote 52 In the village of Yarka, Israel, for example, it is common knowledge that the major economic upsurge in the village, which today is an important commercial hub in the western Galilee, occurred in 1982, when some members of the village used their access to Lebanon and, through licit and illicit trade, amassed the financial wealth that facilitated the rise of Yarka to regional economic prominence.Footnote 53
Israeli state officials were deeply involved in these crossborder exchanges. For example, Nissim Dana, the staff officer of the Ministry of Religious Affairs in charge of the Druze in the Golan Heights, expanded his area of operation to South Lebanon. In the summer of 1982 he opened a special office in Nahariya, in northern Israel, to handle cases of Druze seeking to visit Lebanon for religious purposes. The Ministry of Interior also issued permits for Druze who wished to cross the border for familial or business reasons. The army had its own administrative wing—the Civil Relief Headquarters in the Lebanon Division—that facilitated the entrance of Druze (and other civilians) into Lebanon. Conversely, hundreds of Lebanese Druze were granted permits to work in Israel (together with thousands of non-Druze Lebanese), provided that their families were affiliated with the pro-Israel South Lebanon Army.Footnote 54
CONFLICTING INTERESTS: DRUZE VERSUS THE STATE
The opening of the border in 1982 provided many opportunities for Israeli Druze, but it also led to clashes between state and Druze interests. Israel's policies during the first eighteen months of the war (June 1982 through the end of 1983) in support of its Maronite Christian allies were among the main factors that helped solidify ties between Druze from Israel and from Lebanon. During much of the Lebanese Civil War (1975−90), Lebanese Druze were fierce adversaries of Israel's Christian protégés. Therefore, Israeli Druze were faced with a dilemma. On the one hand, the government expected them to be loyal citizens and unequivocally support Israel's plans in Lebanon. On the other hand, these same plans directly threatened the safety and political status of Lebanese Druze. This tension, which reached its climax with Israel's withdrawal from the Shuf Mountains in September 1983 and the resulting clashes between Christian and Druze militias over control of the vacated area, mobilized Druze in Israel in support of their coreligionists in Lebanon. Scores of Israeli Druze soldiers defected to help Lebanese Druze in their military struggle against the Phalanges.Footnote 55 In addition, prominent members of the community in Israel founded the Druze Monitoring Committee, whose prime purpose was to exert pressure on the government to alter its policies in Lebanon and guarantee the safety of Lebanese Druze.Footnote 56 An American journalist, reporting on this tension as early as September 1982, before the assassination of Bashir al-Jumayyil and the consequent failure of Israel's strategy in Lebanon, commented that “as Israeli Druze soldiers and notables mingle with the larger and more important Lebanese community and reestablish family and religious links ruptured by the 1948 war, they have begun to envision themselves as part of a united Druze community in the region.” The reporter asked Shaykh Jabar Muʿadi, one of the most prominent Druze leaders in Israel and a founding member of the Druze Monitoring Committee, about this tension, and he was quoted as saying, “The Druze are one sect, despite the blood oath [to the State of Israel] we have sworn. It is important that the government of Israel remembers that.”Footnote 57
From the state's perspective, opening the border to Israeli Druze and facilitating the reestablishment of their ties with Lebanese Druze was one way to defuse the tension described above. It was also seen as a constructive way to enhance Druze loyalty to Israel. Dana explained this point with a particular focus on religious permits, his area of responsibility:
We did not have any fear of allowing them to go to Lebanon for religious studies, something we highly value because it makes a positive contribution, as absurd as it sounds, a positive contribution to the relationship between Druze and Jews. This is because their religious texts show a positive attitude toward the Jewish world. Their religious scholars [ʿuqqāl] are the ones who lead the community; they send this message and this is why they are willing to be drafted into the IDF. Now, if they seek to go to Hasbaya, to Khalwat al-Bayada, to study there, it serves our purpose. It strengthens their religious awareness, which is not possible in Israel. There are attempts, imitations, but it is not like studying in the most important religious center in South Lebanon, Hasbaya, al-Bayada. So from this perspective, our attitudes and theirs are similar. There is no reason not to allow them; strengthening religious ties, strengthening religious depth can only make a positive contribution. . . . I don't think we turned down anyone. You want to study? Please go and study.Footnote 58
When Dana said “we” he meant “the state.” The state clearly treated Israeli Druze differently from Israeli Jews, who for the most part were not allowed to cross the border into Lebanon unless performing military duty. This point is crucial for the understanding of state perceptions of the identity and belonging of its citizens, exemplified in the “we” versus “they” dichotomy suggested by Dana. Granting permits to Israeli Druze to cross the border to Lebanon implied not only that the state was allowing them access to their coreligionists, but also that their Israeli citizenship was perceived differently from the citizenship of Israeli Jews. By early 1983 travel in Lebanon was no longer safe for Israeli citizens, and Jews were almost categorically prohibited from crossing the border unless they were soldiers or part of the security establishment. (With few exceptions, even reserve soldiers were no longer assigned to Lebanon.) Israeli Druze, however, were not only allowed to cross the border until 2000, but once in Lebanon they “nonchalantly” took Lebanese taxies, as any other Lebanese would, and were freely able to travel inside the “security zone.” According to some of my interviewees, through the use of forged documents some even went up north, deeper into Lebanon, especially to the Shuf Mountains, which have the highest concentration of Lebanese Druze.Footnote 59
BACK TO SPATIAL SUFFOCATION?
The closing of the border in May 2000, a consequence of Israel's withdrawal from South Lebanon, had a dramatic effect on border life on both sides of the fence. Thousands of southern Lebanese who had been working in Israel since 1976, when the “good fence” opened, suddenly lost their main source of income. Border towns such as Metullah in Israel and Qaliʿa (pronounced Qlayiʿa) in Lebanon, which had thrived during the twenty-five years in which hundreds of Lebanese, Israelis, and UN forces passed through on a daily basis, to and from Israel and Lebanon, almost instantaneously became sleepy frontier towns. The border areas themselves became a war zone again, pitting Hizbullah forces against the IDF. Of all the residents of northern Israel, the Druze were affected most by this change because, yet again, they faced the reality of spatial suffocation and lack of access to their families and religious and political centers in Lebanon and Syria.
However, what had been seen as a regrettable yet unchangeable reality until 1982 was, for many Druze, no longer acceptable in 2000. For eighteen years they had been able to live concomitantly on two scales—the national scale of the State of Israel, and the supranational scale of their Druze coreligionists in bilād al-shām—and many were not willing to return to the status quo ante bellum. Since 2000 a public campaign has been underway to pressure the state to allow Israeli Druze to visit Lebanon and Syria. It is not surprising that religious leaders have spearheaded this effort. Aside from being the spiritual leaders of the community, they were the ones who benefited the most from the 1982 opening of the border and had the most to lose from its closing in 2000. This became apparent when Abu Hasan ʿArif Halawi, the highest spiritual authority for Druze worldwide, died in Lebanon on 26 November 2003. A request to the Ministry of Interior by two hundred ʿuqqāl to travel to the funeral ceremony via Jordan was denied because, it was claimed, the trip would pose a security threat to the state.Footnote 60 Sixty thousand Druze from Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon attended the funeral. The absence of Israeli Druze was conspicuous, and the alternative symbolic ceremony held at the shrine of Nabi Shuʿayb, attended by thousands of members of the community in Israel, could not substitute for “the real thing.”Footnote 61
The Druze took their struggle to the legal arena. In 2004, 246 ʿuqqāl appealed to the Supreme Court, challenging the government's refusal to allow them to visit Lebanon and Syria for religious and familial reasons.Footnote 62 The state opposed their request on the basis of security concerns, invoking the law that prohibits citizens of Israel from visiting “enemy states.” The Druze plaintiffs, for their part, framed their request as a case of basic human rights. They argued that connection to their religious centers and families in Lebanon and Syria is essential for Druze in Israel and the state has no right to deny it to them. The Supreme Court was willing to allow them to visit Syria, provided they use the Quneitra border passage in the Golan Heights. The Syrian regime, however, refused, insisting that they enter Syria via Jordan. While the Supreme Court was still discussing this case, the ʿuqqāl decided not to wait for its final decision and traveled to Syria, flagrantly breaking the law.Footnote 63 When a new appeal was launched on 18 July 2006 in the name of 4,100 Druze ʿuqqāl—some of whom were among the first group that had traveled to Syria without state authorization—the Supreme Court refused to consider their case because of the contempt they had shown the court in the earlier appeal.Footnote 64
This incident had the effect of raising the stakes. In two highly publicized visits, delegations composed of dozens of Druze ʿuqqāl visited Syria and Lebanon by way of Jordan in 2007 and 2010, without state authorization.Footnote 65 They were led by public figures, known members of the “pro-Arab camp” who oppose mandatory conscription for Druze men. When they returned to Israel there was an internal debate within the Druze community about these visits.Footnote 66 Evidently the vast majority of Israeli Druze supported the visits, viewing them as an exercise of fundamental personal and religious rights. If Jews had access to their religious sites and remained in close contact with Jewish communities worldwide, and if Palestinian Arab Sunnis, citizens of Israel, were allowed to travel to Mecca to perform the hajj, why could Druze not enjoy the same rights?
The struggle eventually found its way to the Knesset. On 10 August 2010 Druze Knesset Member Saʿid Naffaʿ initiated a discussion in the Committee on Internal Affairs, requesting that the state provide permits to Druze to visit Syria and Lebanon.Footnote 67 Buttressed by the presence of dozens of religious, political, and lay Druze dignitaries across the political spectrum,Footnote 68 Naffaʿ began his presentation in front of the committee with the following words:
I wish we had a consensus within the community [on other matters] as we have on this subject. We disagree on many things, but on this subject there is across-the-board consensus, regardless of outlook or political status or political or clan [ḥamūla] affiliation, because the people see this as a matter of the utmost importance. As a result of historical circumstances, there is no Druze family that is not divided among at least three of these countries [Lebanon, Syria, and Israel]. This is the human aspect of the request.
The discussion in the committee was largely favorable toward the Druze plea. The important question for David Azulay, the committee chair, was not whether the Druze should be allowed to travel to Syria and Lebanon but rather how to impose state control over these visits. “After all,” Azulay said,
People make these visits without the state's knowledge. In fact, we unwittingly turn them into potential offenders. This is what happens. . . . They leave through Jordan and from Jordan they cross the border to Lebanon or Syria. Then they come back here. No one knows where they went and who left. So if they are already making these visits, let's make it legitimate. We will let them travel legally and not turn them into offenders. Additionally, we must make a statement in the committee that any exit [from Israel] should be legal, with the recognition and knowledge of the state.Footnote 69
Despite this favorable tone, the committee did not reach any decision, because representatives of the security establishment were absent from the discussion and it was agreed that, above all, security considerations had to be taken into account on this matter. Eventually, in an unprecedented measure, the minister of interior granted a group of religious men permission to visit Syria,Footnote 70 but this opportunity was never put to the test because of the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War in March 2011, which made such travel highly unsafe.
The ambiguity of state agencies regarding this issue again surfaced in a legal case against the Druze delegations that had traveled to Syria and Lebanon in 2007 and 2010, and whose visits were publicly exposed. Initially the court convicted the sixteen organizers of the trips for illegally visiting enemy states: “They cannot do as they please and travel to an enemy state without receiving the approval of the State of Israel,” affirmed the judge.Footnote 71 However, under extreme pressure from Druze politicians across the political aisle, and thanks to a public campaign by the convicted, who collected thousands of signatures in support of their case, the state later dismissed the charges against them. The Nazareth District Court unprecedentedly overturned their conviction on 20 May 2014, on the condition that they not travel to Syria and Lebanon again without prior approval from state authorities.Footnote 72 The state, however, was not as generous to Naffaʿ, who had been among the organizers of the 2007 visit to Syria. He was convicted and sentenced to one year in prison for traveling to an enemy state, “not solely for religious purposes, if at all, but in order to meet Syrian officials and hold confidential meetings with senior people in a terrorist organization hostile to Israel.”Footnote 73 The singling out of Naffaʿ is a clear case of state retribution for his political activity undermining the “blood oath” between Druze and the Jewish state and for his support for the Palestinian struggle against Israel.
The trial and conviction of the Druze clergy and subsequent dismissal of charges against them demonstrate that the state has, to a certain extent, reconciled with some of its citizens being part of a space that exceeds the territorial boundaries of the state. At the same time, the state would like to control their access to this space and to depoliticize it. While state authorities often frame this issue as a question of loyalty to Israel, as in the case of Saʿid Naffaʿ, most Israeli Druze refuse to define their relationship with the state in these terms. For them it is a matter of natural belonging to a space that exceeds the territorial boundaries of the State of Israel.Footnote 74 Perhaps there is no better illustration of this duality than the pictures hanging on walls in the houses of Druze I interviewed for this article. Pictures, symbols, and decorations of the Israeli army units in which they served hang next to pictures of Druze spiritual leaders from Lebanon and Syria, Sultan al-Atrash (the legendary Syrian Druze who fought the French in 1925), the main building at Khalwat al-Bayada, and Walid Junblat (the Lebanese Druze leader whom some of them met personally during the years Israel occupied South Lebanon). For these people, there is no contradiction in that one set of pictures frames them as part of the Israeli national space while a second set frames them as part of a larger space that exceeds the boundaries of the state and that contains inhabitants who are in conflict with Israel.
The question of belonging to the wider Middle East touches at the heart of Israel's national ethos. Since the early days of Zionism, Jewish nationalism has defined itself in contradistinction to the societies and cultures of the region. This definition was buttressed, particularly after 1948, by the loss for Israeli Jews of all physical contact with neighboring Arab countries, even for Jews who were dislocated from these countries to Israel. Thus, a sense of belonging to the broader space of bilād al-shām, which is strongly shared by Arabs, was ultimately eliminated from Israel's multiple circles of identity. Furthermore, while disregard for national borders lies at the heart of Druze communal ethos, the Zionist ethos—like in all national-territorial movements—assumes borders are essential for its fulfillment. Thus, the eighteen-year occupation of South Lebanon did have a tremendous effect on Israeli Jews, but not in the realms of identity and belonging. For Druze in Israel, however, the opening of South Lebanon touched precisely on these issues. One of my interviewees told me about his feelings when crossing the border to Lebanon, in words that inspired this article's title: “You feel a belonging to the wider space [merḥav], that you have continuity.” This is exactly what the state would like to control, if not suffocate, and this is exactly what many Druze in Israel would not want to lose, especially after enjoying that sense of belonging and continuity from 1982 to 2000.
CONCLUSION
Tracing relations between Israeli Druze and their Lebanese and Syrian coreligionists provides us with a good story. Souls crossing political boundaries, crossborder marriage, religious practices, and licit and illicit trade are mostly disregarded in state-centered accounts, which are the norm in studies on the Arab–Israeli conflict. But beyond being a compelling story, this case allows us to reassess certain established convictions about space and scale in the modern Middle East. State agencies tend to view their national space and the population that resides within it through a binary lens—loyalty versus disloyalty, inclusion versus exclusion—and these perceptions sometimes find their way into research on the state. But as the case discussed here vividly demonstrates, this binary approach collapses when juxtaposed with the local experience of a community that simultaneously accepts the authority of the state and defies it through its own suprastate identity and spatial practices. Israel has consistently tried to define its relationship with its Druze citizens through this binary approach. The 1982 invasion of Lebanon was a watershed event for Israeli Druze because the broader region, to which they had had no access since the 1948 war, was now open to them. The state facilitated their access to this space with the belief that it would enhance their loyalty to Israel. For many Israeli Druze, however, accessing this space had little to do with the issue of loyalty and more to do with the revival of their connection to the broader region, which from their perspective did not contradict their association with the Jewish state.
However, the closing of the border in 2000 following Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon, which resulted in the latter's reversion to the status of an “enemy state,” meant that the Druze were no longer allowed access to the broader space that had been so central to their social and religious practices. In defiance of state prohibition, some Israeli Druze insisted on making these trips, this time using the Jordan–Syria–Lebanon route, figuratively and practically reliving the regional space of bilād al-shām. If not for the Syrian Civil War, these trips might have continued to the present day, with or without state approval. This war has again highlighted the importance of the regional, or suprastate, scale for Israeli Druze, demonstrated by their public campaigns in support of the Druze in Syria.
As argued in this article, it is the networks of social and political relations between Israeli Druze and the State of Israel, on the one hand, and between them and their co-religionists in Syria and Lebanon, on the other hand, that have come to define the hybrid spatial scale in which they live. In the last decade this hybridity has also been facilitated by social media and other forms of electronic communication that have allowed Israeli Druze to remain—virtually at least—in close contact with their friends and family members across the border. If from 1982 to 2000 they were occasionally able to visit their families in Lebanon, today many remain in daily communication with them through WhatsApp, Facebook, and other internet platforms, while others still use Jordan as a meeting place with their Lebanese and Syrian brothers and sisters.Footnote 75
Finally, this case invites us to explore other examples in the Middle East through the prism of territorial space, scale, and identity. For instance, the Kurds, who are divided among five countries, provide a natural case study for the exploration of spatial perceptions and practices by considering hybrid or integrated scales where the state may remain central while other geographical, political, and social suprastate scales might defy, compete, or cooperate with it. The disintegration of Syria and Iraq also provides us an opportunity to study hybrid spatial scales in cases where the state has lost much of its grip over the population but has not disappeared altogether. Lebanon, with its multiple sectarian communities, which often operate on several scales of identity both inside and outside the country, might also provide fertile ground for the study of hybrid spatial scales.Footnote 76 Needless to say, space and scale could be studied in the cases of Syrian and Lebanese Druze, in a similar manner as this article did on Druze citizens of Israel, though in a reversed geographical direction. These and other examples could enrich our understanding of territorial space and scale as socially constructed processes that either contract or expand, depending on the political reality of the day.
Returning to and concluding with our case study, it remains to be seen how Israeli Druze's spatial perceptions and practices will evolve, given the political tensions experienced by Druze in Syria and Lebanon, on the one hand, and the growing intolerance inside Israel towards non-Jews, on the other. These two forms of pressure, from within and without, will undoubtedly have an effect on their political behavior towards Israel and the broader region. At any rate, this case is a reminder that, while not ignoring the state, we must also consider integrated spatial scales that provide a nuanced understanding of identities, belonging, and politics in the Middle East.
