On March 14th the BBC News website published a report by the Jerusalem bureau’s Lucy Williamson titled “First Druze crossing in 50 years as Israel courts allies in Syria” which opens as follows:
“Early on Friday morning, a group of Syrian men crossed into the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights through a UN-monitored buffer zone.
With no diplomatic relations between Syria and Israel, Syrians crossing here would normally risk being shot or arrested.
This visit, by religious leaders from Syria’s Druze minority, signals the dramatic changes in Israel’s strategy along this frontier and its expanding military control of Syrian territory, in a direct challenge to the new government in Damascus.
It’s the first time in five decades that Druze leaders have crossed from Syria into Israeli-controlled territory to visit Druze religious sites and communities here.”
Williamson had nothing more to tell her readers about the itinerary of the delegation, which included a meeting with the spiritual leader of Israel’s Druze community, a pilgrimage to the faith’s holiest site, the Nabi Shu’ayb shrine, and visits to other sites of religious importance.
Neither did she bother to inform her readers that much more recently than “five decades” ago, during the years 2016 to 2018, thousands of Syrians crossed the border for medical treatment within the framework of ‘Operation Good Neighbour’.
Williamson’s report includes several references to the year 1973: [emphasis added]
“The buffer zone they crossed was set up in a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Syria after the 1973 War, when Israel occupied – and later annexed – Syrian territory in the Golan Heights.”
“While Sunni Syrians fled after the 1973 war, some Druze stayed on and formed close ties to Israel, serving in the army and even taking Israeli citizenship.
Despite his familial roots in the occupied Golan Heights, Syria’s new interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa has not so far broached the issue of Israel’s annexation of Syrian territory since 1973, instead demanding that Israel withdraw from its most recent incursions into the buffer zone and beyond.”
Apparently Williamson’s knowledge of Middle East history does not include the 1967 Six Day War, during which Israel responded to Syrian attacks and took control of the Golan Heights. It was in that year that Syrians – including Ahmed al-Sharaa’s grandfather’s family – fled the region rather than, as claimed by Williamson, during the Yom Kippur war six years later.
Williamson tells her readers that:
“Last December, following the fall of the former Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, Israel moved troops into the buffer zone, in contravention of the ceasefire agreement which bans the presence of any military forces or equipment from either side.”
As has been the case in previous BBC reporting concerning the demilitarised zone (including by Williamson herself) she fails to remind audiences that a decade ago, during the Syrian civil war, UNDOF largely abandoned the demilitarised zone and redeployed to the Israeli side for several years or that both the Syrian army and assorted armed groups were active in that supposedly UNDOF enforced demilitarised area at the time.
One of those armed groups was of course Jabhat al Nusra – headed by the man who Williamson describes as “Syria’s new interim president”. As the BBC knows, that group attacked members of the UN peacekeeping force and took dozens hostage in 2014. That context to Israel’s current approach to the demilitarised zone has been notably absent from BBC reporting since the fall of the Assad regime in Syria.
Moreover, while airbrushing that relevant context from the picture, Williamson chose to promote a false notion concerning the aims of Israel’s military operations since the fall of the Assad regime.
“Earlier this month, after clashes in Jaramana, south of Damascus, Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Mr Katz instructed the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to prepare to defend the Druze community there, and “deliver a sharp and clear warning message: if the regime harms the Druze, it will be harmed”.
“We are obligated to our Druze brothers in Israel to do everything to prevent harm to their Druze brothers in Syria, and will take all the necessary steps to maintain their safety,” the statement said, describing Syria’s new government as a “terrorist regime of extreme Islam”.
Israel has been loudly proclaiming the risks it says minorities like the Druze face from Syria’s new leaders.
But not all Druze – on either side of the frontier – accept that’s the real reason for Israel’s military presence there.
“This story that they want to protect the Druze, we don’t believe in it,” said Nabi al-Halabi, a Druze activist in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. “The main issue is that Israel wants to secure its border,” he told me. “The border is the main thing, not us.””
Israel has of course never claimed otherwise but Williamson nevertheless chose to promote that framing from one sole inadequately presented contributor, whose particular genre of ‘activism’ she twice failed to clarify.
“The activist Nabi al-Halabi says, after decades watching from outside the repressive rule of President Assad, many Druze on the Israeli side of the buffer zone are now assessing what Syria’s transition could mean for them.
“After almost 60 years of Israeli occupation in the Golan Heights, and two or three generations that have been born and live and work in Israel, we’re again looking east,” he said.
“In the case of a future peace agreement between Israel and Syria, what will happen to us? People want to see how the new regime will act – with the Druze community, the Christians, the Alawites. If we satisfied, and there are democratic elections and free speech, I believe people in the Golan Heights will be happy to be under the Syrian government again.””
Interestingly, the BBC is far from the only media outlet to which Halabi has contributed in recent months, with differing messaging.
In December 2024, Halabi was quoted by the JNS as follows:
“We constantly had this nightmare under Assad, that the Golan would be given back. Now this reality has changed,” said Halabi, who works in renewable energy. […]
Amid periodical discussions about returning the land to Assad’s Syria as part of a potential peace agreement, the Golan’s Druze residents have predominantly declined Israeli citizenship, asserting that they consider themselves Syrian citizens living under occupation.
This narrative was widely understood as a communal alibi in case such a deal materialized and they once again became subjects of the oppressive Assad regime, which had waged several wars against Israel even before it became an Iranian client regime in recent years. […]
“People here want to preserve and deepen the Israeli part of their identity and I’m sure it will be easier for many of them to do this now,” Halabi said. “At the same time, it’s now easier to express the Syrian part of our identity because Assad the dictator and his butcher regime are no longer part of that picture,” he added.”
In February 2025, the same contributor was quoted in a report by the Jewish News:
“Druze activist Nabih Al-Halabi is more sceptical of the Assad dynasty, admitting that he cried when he heard Mr Assad had fallen: “I lost dozens of family members over the years under the Assad rule. The Syrians will not accept another dictatorship. It will become a unified democratic state.”
But while Mr Al-Halabi is much more sceptical than Mr Farhat about the Assad regime, he shares a similar nostalgia and longing for Syria.
Israel, he said, treats Druze like second-rate citizens. Mr Al-Halabi shares his father’s story about the family’s first encounter with Israelis: “The soldiers knocked on our doors and told us that from now on we will stop acting and feeling Syrian. From now on we were Israeli. We kept the Syrian part of our identity because we always thought one day we would become Syrian again.””
Readers would of course have been better placed to make up their own minds about the comments from Williamson’s sole contributor had they been informed why he specifically was interviewed and who put her in touch with an “activist” who in recent years led a campaign against wind turbines.
Williamson’s report also tells her readers that:
“Israel is also offering sweeteners along with its new military incursions. The visit by religious leaders across the frontier this week is one. Aid to Druze communities in Syria is another. And Israel has also promised that Syrian agricultural and construction workers will be able to cross into the Golan Heights for work.
There’s also the promise of new education funding for Druze living in the Golan – a reminder of Israel’s investment in the territory it annexed in 1981.”
She fails to inform BBC audiences that the funding announced earlier this month includes another minority group, does not only apply to “Druze living in the Golan” and is not solely directed at improving education.
“Among its key provisions is that NIS 650 million will be allocated for urban planning and housing solutions. This includes establishing a dedicated planning committee for Druze and Circassian localities to accelerate detailed planning. A new framework for electricity connections will also be implemented, and subsidies will be provided for new housing projects, benefiting discharged soldiers and young couples.
Additionally, over NIS 1b. will be spent on improving municipal services, increasing local government budgets, improving public service efficiency, and developing independent revenue streams through economic initiatives.”
Not for the first time we see that Lucy Williamson’s reporting from the “occupied Golan Heights” is marred by a both lack of knowledge about the area concerned and the prioritisation of chosen narratives.
Where was BBC Verify?????????