Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas held a long and apparently successful meeting Nov. 23 in Ramallah with leading members of the Druze community in Israel, telling the small religiously-based community that they are the “purest of all Arabs” for their attachment to their Arab origins and refusal to marry outside their community.
The Druze's Arab nationality is undergoing a rennaissance. Despite serving in the Israeli army, they felt betrayed in July 2018, when the Israeli Knesset passed the nationality law making all non-Jewish citizens in Israel second-class citizens.