Syrian army says Israeli missiles hit near Damascus
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Transcript
00:00 It's tense, as you'd expect, given the fears that people have here of a possible attack
00:03 from Hezbollah, either from Syria, which is just over there to my left, a couple of kilometers
00:10 away, or from Lebanon, just over in that direction there.
00:15 The area is populated just here largely by the Druze, an ethnic and religious minority,
00:22 who were living here when Israel captured the territory, captured the Golan Heights
00:27 from Syria in 1967 after the Six-Day War, incorporated it formally into Israel in 1981,
00:34 although it's not recognized as Israeli territory by the international community.
00:40 And the Druze, incidentally, since then have formed a loyal component of the Israeli armed
00:45 forces, police and intelligence.
00:48 They serve a very high proportion.
00:51 Something around--in some villages, about 80 percent of the villagers have either served
00:55 in or are serving in the armed forces or the police, and many of them have died already
01:01 in the fighting in Gaza.
01:04 But there is still a little bit of tension between the Druze and the Israeli community,
01:09 at large because of a law that was introduced back in 2018 on the Israeli nation, which
01:15 described Israel as a nation-state of the Jewish people.
01:19 That angered the Druze, who felt that that excluded them and was scant reward for the
01:23 service that they've given to the Israeli state since they were incorporated into Israel.
01:29 That said, however, the Druze do continue to be a pretty loyal component of the Israeli
01:34 state.
01:35 And all around here there are special self-defense units which cooperate with the army, try to
01:43 maintain security in the villages, look out for possible incursions and that sort of thing.