Grafting, Remodelling the Near East

In the ever-shifting terrain of the Near East, where borders are porous and identities layered, the idea of “remodelling” the region resurfaces again and again—often through war, diplomacy, migration, and covert alliances. World War II is definitely over, as decisions taken eighty years ago by a selected group of European then-superpowers. Today, amid the fragmentation of Syria, Lebanon’s implosion, and Iraq’s fragile decentralization, new actors emerge—not necessarily new in history, but newly relevant. Among them, the Druze and the Syrian Kurds present unique opportunities for regional restructuring. Their distinct identities, geographic concentration, and historic alliances suggest a model of localized autonomy that may serve both geopolitical and economic agendas. But this potential realignment comes with a price, particularly for the already-dwindling native Christian populations of the region.

The Druze: Guardians of an esoteric legacy

The Druze are a small but strategically vital ethnic-religious community, numbering around one million globally, concentrated in Lebanon, Syria, and Northern Israel. Their religion—rooted in Ismaili Shi’a Islam and influenced by Neoplatonism, Persian thought, and Gnostic cosmologies, Eastern Christian and Jewish, Yezidi mixed traditions – remains largely secretive. The Druze do not accept converts and discourage intermarriage, preserving their cohesion. Their theological tradition venerates figures such as al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, the sixth Fatimid caliph. Over centuries, they have developed a survivalist pragmatism and a preference for tight-knit autonomy.

Despite their numbers, the Druze have played outsized roles in regional affairs. In Ottoman times, they held quasi-autonomous rule in Mount Lebanon. Under the French Mandate, they resisted both Ottoman and Western oversight. In modern times, their pragmatism translated into a rare alliance with the Zionist movement.

Druze-Jewish/Israeli relations: a choice of loyalty

While most Arab populations opposed Jewish immigration and later the creation of Israel, the Druze leadership in the Galilee chose a different path. Viewing the Jews as modernizers and reliable partners, and wary of pan-Arab nationalism that excluded minorities, many Druze aligned with Jewish forces even before 1948. This alliance solidified in the early years of the state, leading to the conscription of Druze men into the IDF—a policy still unique among non-Jewish communities in Israel.

Today, the Druze in Israel navigate a delicate but functioning identity: loyal citizens serving in elite units while preserving their communal and religious distinctiveness. Among Druze in the Golan Heights, tensions remain over Syrian identity, but the broader arc reflects an embedded, long-term trust. Syrian Kurds:

De facto autonomy and future prospects

The Syrian Kurds, concentrated in the northeast, have laid the groundwork for federal autonomy since the Assad regime’s retreat during the civil war. Their secular, multi-ethnic project is combined with military success against ISIS and US support, has given them both credibility and leverage. It develops in Rojava, the Syrian Kurdistan where Kurds historically settled within present-day Syria. Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, a de facto autonomous region in northeastern Syria that is sometimes called Rojava.

Critically, the Kurds control oil fields and transit zones, making them a key economic actor. A corridor linking Kurdish and Druze regions – from northern Syria through southern Syria and into northern Israel—could serve as an alternative trade and energy route, bypassing Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon and fragile Iraq.

Local native cartographies: Beyond the superpower legacy

What distinguishes the current moment is the absence of a dominant foreign superpower dictating outcomes. With American disengagement, Russian overreach and war both in Syria and Ukraine, and European drift, a vacuum has opened—one paradoxically rich in local initiative. For the first time in modern history, Jews, Druze, and Kurds can imagine and, to an extent, realize indigenous (native) maps of sovereignty, rather than merely react to imposed ones.

This new reality revives Israel’s “periphery doctrine,” developed in the 1950s, which sought strategic alliances with non-Arab or non-Sunni minorities: Kurds in Iraq, Maronites in Lebanon, Druze within and beyond its borders. In the post-Arab Spring fragmentation, this approach regains relevance—not to build an empire, but to construct islands of resilience and mutual interest among embattled minorities. These relationships are not merely tactical but increasingly cultural, legal, and even spiritual.

The Churches of Jerusalem and Israel’s meta-historical vision

A revealing lens on this reconfiguration lies in the status of the 13 official Churches of Jerusalem, all of which—since 1967—operate under Israeli civil law. The traditional Churches got in shock and had never thought of such a new unexpected “return of the Jews according to the sayings of the Prophets. These Churches represent venerable traditions: Greek, Armenian, Syriac, Latin, Ethiopian, Coptic, and more. Yet despite public declarations of cooperation, they rarely speak for each other, let alone with one voice. Their identity structures are defensive, inward-facing, often territorial and linked to “offshore political interests” that have no clutch with redemption.

This disunity has consequences. Each year, unresolved tax obligations – on land, buildings, institutions—accumulate, creating a web of financial vulnerability. Many Churches, unwilling to cede symbolic power or institutional autonomy, are entangled in multi-million-shekel property disputes. This dysfunction ironically enhances Israel’s hand.

Israel is able to leverage these internal frictions toward a broader vision: not one of forced homogenization, but of meta-historical inclusion. Tribal and religious communities—whether Druze, Bedouin, or Kurdish—are offered legal recognition, infrastructure, and a degree of self-rule within a flexible federalized model. This vision is not doctrinal but deeply pragmatic: a patchwork of rooted minorities in semi-autonomous structures, coexisting under a sovereign Jewish framework.

As the Churches flounder in legalism and symbolic posturing, others step into the vacuum – tribes, regional actors, and pragmatic religious leaders. Israel’s vision of sovereignty becomes less about territory and more about civic and spiritual coherence.

As French Noahide thinker Aimé Pallière once wrote in Le Sanctuaire Inconnu, Israel – far from being just a state—embodies the “catholicity of Jewishness,” a reality in which the service of the One God is re-deployed, not in exclusivism, but in a form of living prophetic plurality. This makes Israel spiritually magnetic to some Christians—not through theological agreement, but through legal clarity and a certain prophetic openness. In this light, the fragmentation of Christian Churches becomes not only a crisis, but also a spiritual and civilizational threshold.

The fading presence of the Native Christians

Meanwhile, the native Christian populations of the region continue to decline. From Assyrians and Chaldeans in Iraq to Maronites in Lebanon, war, migration, and demographic pressure have decimated communities that once formed the intellectual and spiritual spine of the Levant.

Paradoxically, as native Christians flee, millions of Christian expatriates – Filipinos, Indians, Ethiopians, Ukrainians, Russians, Europeans… – arrive in the Gulf states, often under restrictive labor regimes. Their presence has led to offshore-run ecclesial competition in the Gulf: Orthodox, Latin, Eastern, Anglican, Evangelical. Thus, Christianity does not disappear, but shifts from indigeneity to migration, from rootedness to fluidity—while losing much of its historical agency in Jerusalem, Damascus, or Mosul.

Conclusion: Between Realpolitik and minority futures

The remodeling of the Near East through localized autonomous regions – particularly for the Druze and Kurds – is no longer a theoretical scenario. It reflects facts on the ground: communal endurance, economic leverage, and geopolitical fractures that leave the old Arab nation-states in retreat.

Israel’s evolving policy—flexible sovereignty, selective alliances, and meta-historical inclusion—positions it as both beneficiary and architect of this reconfiguration. But the path is narrow. The empowerment of certain groups risks the erasure of others.

None of this ultimately has to do with faith, doctrine, or the Divine Presence itself, but with the ancient and ongoing war between good and evil as it plays out in systems, powers, and human dignity.

Moreover, at its deepest level, the current unrest and remodeling only make sense within the slow, long-term grafting of the Jewish people back into their land – a brand-new reality, a hapax – a process that echoes through the fractured identities of their neighbors, shaping the region’s spiritual and political tensions alike.

If guided with restraint, transparency, and a deep memory of shared suffering, this new constellation of tribal and religious autonomy could serve not just Israeli interests, but a broader vision of post-imperial coexistence – fragile, imperfect, but perhaps more honest than the models that came before.