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Israel to (Maybe) Take In Wounded Syrian Refugees

Image via Javier Zarracina/Vox

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday, Dec. 20, that Israel was looking into the possibility of bringing wounded refugees from the Syrian city of Aleppo to Israeli hospitals for treatment. For years, Israel has been trying to avoid getting involved in the civil war taking place in neighboring Syria.

“We see the tragedy of terrible suffering of civilians and I’ve asked the Foreign Ministry to seek ways to expand our medical assistance to the civilian causalities of the Syrian tragedy, specifically in Aleppo where we’re prepared to take in wounded women and children, and also men if they’re not combatants,” Netanyahu said. 

“We’d like to do that: Bring them to Israel, take care of them in our hospitals as we’ve done with thousands of Syrian civilians. We’re looking into ways of doing this; it’s being explored as we speak,” said the prime minister.

This could allow hundreds of Syrians, a country technically at war with Israel, to cross into the country at the express invitation of a prime minister normally known for his hard-line positions on Iran, the Palestinians, and other issues.

In the last two and a half years, around 2,000 Syrians have been admitted to Israeli hospitals. The majority are male, up to 90 percent at Ziv, the hospital closest to the border. But there are women too, while 17 percent of all patients are children. At least 10 Syrian babies have been born at Ziv alone since Syrians began arriving in February 2013.

Israel would prefer President Assad to survive his country’s bloody two-year insurgency if the alternative were a takeover by rebels infiltrated by Islamic extremists, Israeli officials said yesterday. “Better the devil we know” to “the demons we can only imagine if Syria falls into chaos, and the extremists from across the Arab world gain a foothold there,” declared a senior Israeli intelligence officer.

Netanyahu’s announcement, as unexpected as it may have been, could help wounded Syrians fleeing the violence in their own countries survive and find new homes.

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