Escalation follows deadly attack on Bedouin communities; Israel grants a temporary window for government intervention.
Suwayda is once again on the brink. Throughout the night and into Friday morning, convoys of Syrian Internal Security Forces (ISF) gathered on the city’s northern and western approaches, engines idling. At the same time, commanders awaited the order to enter. The Interior Ministry’s spokesman, Nour-al-Din Al-Baba, insisted to Reuters that these units remain on “normal readiness” and have not redeployed inside the city; yet, multiple field reporters observed armored vehicles and riot-control trucks lined up only a few kilometers from the downtown roundabouts.
Their prospective mission is delicate. Fierce clashes have been raging since Thursday between local Druze-dominated factions and tribal fighters drawn largely from Bedouin clans. Tribal forces, strengthened overnight by reinforcements from eastern Syria and rural Aleppo, now hold positions approximately three kilometres northwest of Suwayda’s municipal limits. The head of the Southern Syrian Tribal Gathering told Al Jazeera that, should the state fail to impose order, the tribes “will take matters into their own hands”—a statement that underscores both their confidence and their distrust of Damascus.
Casualty figures remain fluid. Local activists sympathetic to the tribes report more than one hundred Bedouin killed and allege that armed groups loyal to prominent Druze cleric Hikmat Al-Hijri torched homes and forced thousands to flee villages west of the city. Druze sources counter that tribal fighters initiated Thursday’s violence by storming checkpoints and kidnapping militiamen. With communications intermittent and the front lines shifting by the hour, independent confirmation has proved impossible.
Regional actors are watching closely. An Israeli official told reporters on Friday that Israel would tolerate a “limited entry” of Syrian security forces into Suwayda for forty-eight hours, citing the danger of wider instability along the Golan frontier. Israeli warplanes have been reported over southern Syria since late Thursday, though no strikes were confirmed. Meanwhile, a United Nations armored convoy of roughly sixty vehicles rolled southward through Daraa province at dawn, its mandate unannounced but widely interpreted as contingency planning for humanitarian access.
Contradictory messaging from Damascus further complicates the picture. While some security sources brief friendly media that no intervention is imminent, others say the ISF has been tasked to separate combatants and re-establish complete control of the city. Analysts suggest that the government may be deliberately ambiguous, hoping that the mere threat of entry will coerce both sides into a ceasefire without committing troops to house-to-house fighting.
Historically, Suwayda’s Druze majority has maintained an uneasy autonomy during Syria’s civil war, forming local militias to deter jihadist cells and resist what many residents perceive as predatory state security branches. Bedouin tribes, for their part, claim ancestral grazing rights in the surrounding plains and accuse Druze factions of harassment and land seizures. This week’s bloodletting was sparked by a series of kidnappings and retaliatory attacks that spiralled beyond the ability of village elders to contain.
Hikmat Al-Hijri, whose moral authority among the Druze rivals that of any state official, appealed late Thursday for “conflict-resolution forces” from Damascus—language interpreted by many as a request for a neutral gendarmerie rather than combat troops. Whether the Interior Ministry’s armored columns fit that description is open to question. For now, engines continue to rumble on the city’s outskirts, tribal fighters entrench along orchard lines, and residents brace for either a negotiated de-escalation or the first major urban battle Suwayda has seen in over a decade.
The coming forty-eight hours are likely to decide the province’s immediate fate. If talks fail and the ISF charges in, they will face determined Druze fighters who know every alley. If the tribes advance instead, sectarian violence could engulf the city itself. And if all sides choose a pause, weary civilians may yet glimpse a path back from the brink—though few in Suwayda dare to hope for lasting calm.
Photo: Syria Tv