Yossi Schwartz, Internationalist Socialist League (Section of the RCIT in Israel/Occupied Palestine) 19.07.2025
One of the senior religious leaders of the Druze community in Syria, Sheikh Hikmat Al-Hijri, continues to take a pro-Zionist line against the regime in Damascus.
In a videotaped statement released on Wednesday, al-Hijri called for external intervention to protect the Druze from regime forces. This statement was issued shortly after he publicly opposed the truce agreement, which he said was imposed on the Druze under pressure from the Damascus government and foreign countries whose identities have not been revealed.
Al-Hijri also rejected the regime’s attempts to restore state and security institutions to the province, and continued to establish his status as a supporter of local rebel groups.
Al-Hijri was born in 1965 in Venezuela, and as a young man returned with his family to Syria. After graduating from Damascus University, he briefly returned to Venezuela, but in 1998 returned to Syria permanently. In 2012, following the sudden death of his brother in a car accident suspected of being an assassination attempt by the regime, he inherited the role of “Sheikh al-Aqel”, a position that has been inherited from his family for generations.
His appointment was accompanied by an internal rift, as two other spiritual leaders – Hamoud al-Hanawi and Yusuf al-Jarboa – acted separately, and the Druze community was torn between three parallel leaderships. With the outbreak of the civil war in 2011, al-Hijri took a hesitant line; Despite his ties to President Bashar al-Assad, he refrained from expressing direct support for him.
However, in 2013, he began to openly back the Syrian army, even calling Assad a “national symbol.” In 2015, he called on the government to arm the residents of Sweida in the face of threats directed at them, and even demanded that it take firm action against the Druze “Movement of Men of Honor” after the assassination of its founder, Waid al-Balous, which drew criticism from Druze activists who saw him as a traitor.
In 2018, he encouraged young Druze to enlist in the Syrian army, and it seems that he maintained a relatively loyal line to the regime until 2021, when his relations with the regime deteriorated following a quarrel with a senior officer in Syrian intelligence.
Since then, a rift has developed between him and the regime, even though he maintained a channel of communication with Assad himself, who tried to appease him. By the end of 2021, he had already placed direct responsibility for poverty and chaos in the country on the regime. In 2022, he called for a general mobilization against the regime forces in the city and became a key figure in the leadership of the popular protest, which intensified in 2023.
After the fall of the Assad regime in December 2024, he initially took a moderate approach toward the transitional government headed by Abu Muhammad al-Julani, expressed readiness for temporary administrative cooperation, and emphasized the closeness of his positions to the new leadership. But within a few months, he changed course, accusing the new government of “extremism” and calling for its members to be prosecuted internationally.
Last March, al-Hijri declared that the Druze were in a “make or no more” phase. He opposed the new constitution . He made it clear that he had no intention of removing the weapons from the local factions, and in an interview with the Washington Post, he even emphasized: “Israel is not the enemy.”
His position is against the independence of Syria and for international supervision over it, i.e., Western imperialism, and he supports Israel, which seeks to “turn Syria into small ethnic states.”
With such friends, who are crackpots, it is better to have open enemies!