The country is providing medical care and other unidentified supplies to the insurgents while potentially extracting a valuable vein of intelligence on the activities of President Bashar Assad's army as well as extremist opposition forces within Syria.
In the past three months, battled-hardened Syrian rebels have transported scores of wounded Syrians across a cease-fire line that has separated Israel from Syria since 1974, according to a 15-page report by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on the work of the U.N. Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF). Once in Israel, they receive medical treatment in a field clinic before being sent back to Syria where, presumably, some will return to carry on the fight.
"Close to 900 Syrians have been treated in Israel, so you should assume the operation is going flawlessly."
U.N. blue helmets responsible for monitoring the decades-old cease-fire report observed armed opposition groups "transferring 89 wounded persons" from Syrian territory into Israel, where they were received by members of the Israeli Defense Forces, according to the report. The IDF returned 21 Syrians to armed opposition members back in Syria, including the bodies of two who died.
"Throughout the reporting period, UNDOF frequently observed armed members of the opposition interacting with the IDF across the cease-fire line," according to the report. "On one occasion UNDOF observed the IDF on the Alpha side [inside Israel] handing over two boxes to armed opposition on the Bravo side [inside Syria]."
U.N. officials worry that rising instability in the cease-fire zone could ultimately threaten the uneasy peace along the Syrian and Israeli line of separation.
Although the cease-fire between Israel and Syria has largely held, Israeli forces on March 18 and 19 fired on Syrian troops, killing two Syrian soldiers and wounding 17 others, marking the "most significant violation" of the truce in its 40-year history. Israel says it fired on the Syrian position in response to the Syrians' placement of an improvised explosive device that injured four Israeli soldiers, one seriously.
"Our primary mission is to defend the border from potential spillover of the civil war into Israel from the Syrian Golan Heights."
"The ongoing military activities in the area of separation continue to have the potential to heighten tensions between Israel and the Syria Arab Republic and to jeopardize the cease-fire between the two countries, in addition to heightening the risk to United Nations personnel," Ban wrote.
"I call on the government of the Syrian Arab Republic to stop the use of airstrikes, which cause suffering to the civilian population," Ban wrote. "I also once again condemn the horrific atrocities committed by some armed members of the opposition."
The Israeli government has been providing medical assistance to Syria's wounded for more than a year. In February, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu paid a visit to a military field hospital in the Golan Heights in a tour aimed at contrasting Israel's humanitarianism with that of Iran, one of Syria's military backers, claiming it was arming, financing and training Syrian forces responsible for killing and wounding Syrian civilians.
Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, a spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces, said the Israeli government has provided medical assistance to more than 1,000 Syrians over the past 14 months. "We give medical aid to people who are in dire need," he said in a telephone interview. "We don't do any vetting or check where they are from or which group they are fighting for, or whether they are civilians."
Lerner said that Israeli forces have a kind of "gentleman's agreement" with Syrians across the border to alert Israeli forces that they intend to deliver their wounded.
But he said that Israel's cooperation with Syrian is strictly medical and humanitarian. "The Israeli policy of non-involvement in Syria is what binds us," he said. "Our primary mission is to defend the border from potential spillover of the civil war into Israel from the Syrian Golan Heights."
Ehud Yaari, an Israeli fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Studies and an expert on the Golan Heights, said that Israel is supplying Syrian villages with medicines, heaters and other humanitarian supplies. The assistance, he said, has benefited civilians and insurgents.
"The wounded are both fighters and civilians but there are not too many civilians left because of the fighting raging there," he said. "Close to 900 Syrians have been treated in Israel, so you should assume the operation is going flawlessly. It would be not wrong to assume there is some sort of coordination going on with the armed rebels on the ground."
The Israeli assistance is only a single piece of a broader international effort, including the United States, to lend support to so-called local Syrian opposition groups in southern Syria fighting forces loyal to Assad. The United States, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and other governments are coordinating military support out of a joint operations center in Amman, Jordan.
Share
