Israel’s stated policy is to offer medical treatment to Syrians irrespective of possible affiliation to armed groups, and insisted that the wounded Syrians were civilians. Jordan has quietly informed Druze leaders in Syria and Lebanon, including Walid Jumblatt, that it can’t admit any more refugees from Syria. Two Israeli soldiers in the ambulance were also lightly wounded, and the other Syrian was evacuated to an Israeli hospital in critical condition. Israeli media said nine Druze were arrested over the attacks on Monday, when a mob killed a Syrian and wounded another in the Golan Heights and an ambulance was stoned in the Galilee town of Hurfesh.
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Damascus’s official news agency SANA on Tuesday described those behind the lethal ambulance attack as “heroic Syrian young men” and alleged they had targeted wounded insurgents from the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front. The Jewish state says it is not involved in the internal Syrian fighting, but doesn’t rule out the possibility that some of those given medical care are rebels.
The Druze, a sect which is an offshoot of Islam, is scattered throughout the region and are loyal to the regime of the nations in which they live. Video footage taken shortly after the incident showed an ambulance with its windshield smashed and Israeli forces keeping guard near a cordoned-off area. Fighting occasionally does spillover and Israel has responded. Hours before the ambush of the ambulance by Golan Druze, another military ambulance bearing Syrian wounded was intercepted by protestors in a Druze village inside Israel.
They stand in contrast to other, loyalist Druze in Israel who have a particularly tight bond with Jews that dates even farther back than helping them win independence in 1948.
At the meeting, attended by Druze Local Councils Forum head Jabar Hamed, Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon, Deputy Minister Ayoub Kara and ex- MK Salah Tarif, Netanyahu said that if someone “takes the law into his hands, it is our duty, of course, to condemn this and see to it that these offenders don’t become the norm. This is something that we must prevent – the recurrence of such events”, Netanyahu said.
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“A military vehicle traveling from Majdal Shams to Kiryat Shmona was stopped by dozens of people, residents of the Golan villages, who attacked the vehicle”, police spokesperson Mickey Rosenfeld said, adding that large forces of police and the military had arrived at the scene. “We are a country of law and are not a part of the anarchy that is spreading around us”.
