Rafik Halabi, head of the local council in Daliyat al-Karmel and a prominent voice within Israel's Druze community, has sent a letter to US President Donald Trump urging immediate American intervention to prevent what he describes as the starvation and extermination of the Druze population in Syria's Sweida province.
Rafik Halabi © Mena Today
Rafik Halabi, head of the local council in Daliyat al-Karmel and a prominent voice within Israel's Druze community, has sent a letter to US President Donald Trump urging immediate American intervention to prevent what he describes as the starvation and extermination of the Druze population in Syria's Sweida province.
In the letter, Halabi uses extraordinarily harsh language to describe Syrian transitional President Ahmad al-Sharaa and his government, branding them terrorists responsible for atrocities against Druze, Kurdish and other minority communities, and explicitly calling for al-Sharaa's removal.
He accuses al-Sharaa's forces of orchestrating a total blockade on Sweida, cutting off food and fuel supplies to the province and leaving electricity down in dozens of villages for roughly ten months.
According to Halabi, some 200,000 people are currently sheltering in Sweida after what he describes as the forced occupation and looting of Druze villages, with remaining food supplies — particularly flour and vegetables, sufficient for only a few more days.
Specific requests to Washington
Halabi's letter makes several concrete demands of the Trump administration: the immediate opening of a humanitarian corridor to Sweida that he says he has raised in previous correspondence; airstrikes on checkpoints he alleges are being used by forces loyal to al-Sharaa to enforce the siege; and support for a Syrian government "acceptable to Syrian society."
As an alternative, he proposes the annexation of the entire Sweida district to Israel, with a secure humanitarian corridor running roughly 12 kilometers from the Jordanian border along the Daraa-Sweida line.
He also warns, without providing evidence, that al-Sharaa and allied jihadist factions are plotting a large-scale armed assault on Israel involving fighters recruited from Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Muslim communities in Western countries, including the United States.
The appeal comes amid renewed tension in Sweida, a Druze-majority province in southern Syria that has seen repeated bouts of deadly violence since the fall of the Assad regime, including clashes in July 2025 between Druze fighters, Bedouin tribes and government forces that left hundreds dead.
Israel has previously conducted strikes in Syria it says are aimed at protecting the Druze community, moves that have at times drawn criticism from the Trump administration, which has pressed Israel not to undermine Syria's post-Assad stability.
Halabi's letter reflects a broader push by segments of Israel's Druze community for Washington and Jerusalem to take a harder line against Damascus over the situation in Sweida.
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