by AP and Israel Hayom Staff
Doctors and patients say IDF program that has treated 3,000 wounded Syrians since the start of the civil war in Syria has changed perceptions, eased tensions • Israeli hospital treats seven Syrians, including two children, after deadly chemical attack.
Israeli military medics
assist wounded Syrians in the Golan Heights on Thursday
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Photo credit: AP  |
Seven wounded Syrians -- two children, four
women and a man -- waited in pain for darkness to fall to cross into
enemy territory. Under the faint moonlight, members of the IDF's Medical
Corps quickly whisked the patients across the hostile frontier into
armored ambulances headed to hospitals for intensive care.
It was a scene that has recurred since 2013,
when the Israeli military began treating Syrian civilians wounded in
fighting just a few kilometers away. Israel says it has discretely
treated 3,000 patients -- a number that it expects to balloon as
fighting heats up in neighboring Syria in the wake of a chemical attack
and consequent U.S. missile strike.
While the numbers are a tiny fraction of the
hundreds of thousands of dead and wounded in the six-year Syrian war,
both doctors and patients say the program has changed perceptions and
helped ease tensions across the hostile border.
Dr. Salman Zarka, director of Ziv Medical
Center in the northern Israeli city of Safed, is a former colonel in the
Medical Corps who served on the Syrian border. "I couldn't then have
imagined setting up a humanitarian program for Syrians," he says.
But now, his hospital has delivered 19 Syrian babies and regularly sends prescriptions with patients back into Syria.
"All this makes it more human, more
complicated," Zarka says, adding that he worries about patients he knows
on a first-name basis who have returned to Syria.
In Thursday night's rescue, medical officers
decided that two of the seven patients had wounds that were too urgent
to wait for medical care and so they radioed in a helicopter. Soldiers
carried the two on stretchers beneath the whirring blades as the
helicopter lifted off into the inky night sky.
"We check their breathing, their pulse, their
blood pressure -- all their vital signs," said Lt. Omri Caspi, a medical
officer. "We take a look at their injuries, we see the cuts, we check
the chest, the heads, everything, and then we decide which treatment
they need."
Just a few years ago, such scenes would have
been unthinkable. Israel and the government of Syrian President Bashar
Assad were bitter enemies, and contact across the hostile lines of the
divided Golan Heights was virtually nonexistent.
But the outbreak of Syria's civil war in 2011
has radically altered the area. The Syrian side of the Golan Heights is
now divided between government troops and a host of rebel groups.
Russian, Iranian and Lebanese Hezbollah forces have all joined the
fighting to offer support to Assad's beleaguered forces.
Israel has largely stayed out of the fighting
in Syria, which has claimed over 400,000 lives. But it has reportedly
carried out a number of airstrikes on suspected weapons shipments to
Hezbollah in Syria.
Tensions skyrocketed this week after an
alleged chemical weapons attack by the Syrian government killed dozens
of people. The U.S. responded early Friday by launching 59 Tomahawk
missiles at a Syrian air base -- a dramatic escalation lauded by Sunni
states, rebels and Israel but condemned by Assad, Russia and China.
Israel's newest patients started their
treatment just as the American missiles struck, a little before dawn,
less than 200 kilometers (120 miles) away in Syria.
Two Syrian patients shared their experiences
in Syria and Israel with The Associated Press as soldiers from the
Israeli military supervised. The two spoke on condition of anonymity,
out of fear they or their families would be targeted in Syria if their
stay in Israel was made public.
Both young men praised the Israeli people and
government while lambasting Assad and his supporters. They said that as
patients have returned to Syria from Israel, word has slowly spread that
Israel can help those desperately wounded. The medical care is free of
charge. The hospital said it doesn't discriminate when it comes to
admittance and insists it doesn't collect personal patient information.
One patient, a 26-year-old from Deraa, the
city in Syria's south where the revolution broke out in 2011, flashed a
toothy smile while sitting in a wheelchair; one leg a bandaged stump,
the other gripped in a metal cast. He said he was on the street when a
bomb blast mangled his legs. He couldn't find treatment in Syria's
devastated medical sector, so he made his way to Israel, a nation he was
raised to hate.
"Back then when there were no incidents in
Syria, no revolution, no nothing -- the greatest enemy in the world was
Israel. It was the first enemy," he said.
His fellow patient used the pseudonym
"Baibars," the name of a 12th-century Muslim warrior who defeated the
Crusaders and Mongols. A bomb crushed bones in his face, an injury that
without medical help festered until he struggled to open his mouth.
After 40 days in Ziv hospital and many
surgeries later, the 25-year-old revolutionary now talks incessantly and
even sings about lost love -- in addition to praising Israeli pastries.
"We reached countries that my grandparents did not reach and met good people," he says through a jaw yet to fully heal.
From his Israeli hospital room, Baibars said
he could see into Syria. In his long list of enemies of the Syrian
people -- Assad, Russia, Iran, the Houthis, Hezbollah, Afghanistan -- he
no longer includes Israel.
"The regime has used chemical weapons since
the beginning of the war," Baibars said, referring to alleged attacks in
East Ghouta and Dharaya. "We were just trying to defend ourselves."
"The future of Syria has no Bashar Assad," Baibars said. "Israel is not the enemy. Bashar is the enemy."
AP and Israel Hayom Staff
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=41651
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