Saw this on 'interesting news from around the globe.
I think this is what more nations need to do - notice they are making sure aid gets to where it is needed and are helping NGO's get those supplies to the border. Been going on for over a year...
Israeli Aid Gives an Unexpected ‘Glimmer of Hope’ for Syrians
GOLAN HEIGHTS — Quietly, over the last year, hundreds of sick Syrian children and their chaperones have been whisked across enemy lines at dawn for treatment at clinics in Israel, slipping back home after dark.
Truckloads of supplies have passed into Syrian villages through a gate in the sturdy security fence that Israel has constructed since Syria erupted into civil war, including stacks of flour, generators, half a million liters of fuel, construction materials, tons of shoes, baby formula, antibiotics and even a few vehicles and mules.
This week, the Israeli military revealed the scope of the humanitarian aid project, which it calls Operation Good Neighbor and which began in June 2016 along the Israeli-Syrian boundary on the Golan Heights.
The aid project depends on an extraordinary level of cooperation between old foes on both sides of the decades-old armistice lines separating the Syrians and Israelis. Military officials say they coordinate directly with Syrian doctors and village leaders to gauge needs...........
Most of the supplies are donated by Israeli and foreign nongovernmental organizations, while the Israeli government has footed the bill for medical treatment. According to the Multifaith Alliance for Syrian Refugees, a New York-based network of organizations involved in the aid effort, Israel has also become an efficient, if unlikely, staging area for Syrian aid groups operating abroad that, facilitated by the Israeli military, are now shipping goods into Syria through Israeli ports.........
Since Israel and Syria are technically in a state of war and have no diplomatic relations, Israel has not taken in masses of Syrian refugees as other countries have done. Even a government proposal to bring in 100 orphaned Syrian children was dropped.
Still, many Israelis have expressed distress over standing by as the humanitarian disaster has unfolded in Syria, which is what motivated the military to undertake the operation, officials said........
Syrians wounded in the fighting first arrived at the Israeli border fence early in 2013, desperate for help.
“We faced a dilemma,” said Dr. Noam Fink, the chief medical officer of the Israeli military’s northern command. “The decision was made by our commanders and our government to allow them to enter the country and to give them full medical treatment.”
Since then, with medical facilities in war-ravaged towns and villages barely functioning, Israel has treated about 4,000 war-wounded or sick Syrians.
Israel says it is now getting aid to an area inhabited by about 200,000 Syrians, including around 400 displaced families living in tent encampments along the international boundary, and is helping equip new clinics in the area.
“So far the strategy is working,” said Amos Harel, the military affairs analyst for the newspaper Haaretz
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/20/w...er=rss&emc=rss
Two thumbs up!
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Originally Posted by yoni
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