A Syrian mother, originally from the Yarmouk area of Damascus fled with her nine children to Southern Syria when she heard rumors about Israel’s helping their neighbor’s sick children.
“It is my first time in Israel,” she said, explaining that she asked for permission for her son, who suffers from problems in his joints, to be seen by Israeli physicians. “All I want is for my son to get the right treatment. I used to see Israel as an occupying power,” she related as we waited for a doctor to call her son’s name, “but not anymore. My whole opinion of Israel has changed.”
The Syrian war has erupted in March 2011 and has quickly turned into a humanitarian crisis. In June 2016, in order to help their wounded neighbors, the IDF established the Northern headquarters of the “Operation Good Neighbor”, which aims to help Syrian civilians living across the border.
From the beginning of the operation, more than 3000 Syrians have been threated. Usually transported to Nahariya’s Western Galilee Hospital or Ziv Medical Cenrter in Safed, extreme injured patients were sent to hospitals in the center of the country.
A Syrian wounded patient hospitalized in the orthopedic wing of Ziv Hospital shared his story: “I don’t know the situation of my family at home. I left a wife and two-year-old child, my son, back in Syria.” He says that he’s grateful for the treatment he’s receiving in Israel, and that “(he prays) that other countries would do the same. He calls on them to “wake up and see what’s happening in Syria to the Syrian people.”
Beside medical care, Israel provides its Syrian neighbors in need with life-saving supplies such as food, fuel, clothes and baby care supplies.
During the summer, the Golan Regional Council opened a donation center to collect supplies from the Israeli residents of the nearby communities. Individual gift bags containing toys, crayons, games and candies were offered to displaced Syrian children in camps across the border.
“For six years, a cruel war that has claimed the lives of more than 500,000 people has been taking place in Syria, and the world remains quiet in the face of this horror. We, the residents of the Golan, look right over the fence and see the people fleeing from the killing fields together with their children, and clinging to the fence with Israel,” said Eli Malka, the head of the Golan Regional Council, who coordinated the effort to collect the packages.
A few months ago, a unique rescue mission saved the life of some 800 Syrians white helmets by transferring them from Qunetra to Jordan. The Israel Defense Forces transported workers and their families who were under life threat.