IDF Lt. Col (Res) Marco Moreno standing near the Syrian border in the Israeli Golan Heights.
This article is translated from a recent Hebrew-language article published on the Israeli Channel 12 news website in February, 2023: N12 - The surprising operation on the Syrian border and the lynching: the agent operator reconstructs (mako.co.il)
“I was at the Festigal (children’s holiday theater production) with my kids, and the division commander calls: ‘Your friends have arrived.’”
Lt. Col. (Res) Marco Moreno was in the CP at the dramatic moment when the Syrians arrived, and information began to come across the border.
Exactly ten years later, Israel once more extends a hand to Syria, and Moreno remembers how it all began; Dinner, interests, emotional moments – and a deadly incident that almost ended in a regional explosion.
The Syrian Civil War is still ongoing, although at a very low intensity, in the far north of the country, where it has been almost forgotten. While travelling through the Druze villages in the Northern Golan, the tourism venues are full these days with those who are trying to find a bit of wintery calm and to forget that for almost six years, beginning in 2012, the horrors of war reached almost to the border fence, at the threshold of Israel.
Those who did reach that threshold were approximately 5,000 wounded Syrians, citizens of an enemy state, who were granted medical care – and many more who were treated there at the border. Israel could find itself entering – or being dragged – into the war in a number of different ways. But when analyzing Israel’s part in this fierce war, one thing stands out above all others. It is a unique operation that is now almost forgotten, but which caught the attention of the world at the time.
A wounded Syrian child who crossed the border
It happened exactly the day before yesterday a decade ago, February 16, 2013, a Saturday morning. Lt. Col. (Res.) Marco Moreno, a member of HumInt Unit 504, remembers well this day, when the first wounded Syrians began arriving in Israel. “We got to the fence at 11:00 and saw five wounded men and another two nearby. The doctor from the Golani Brigade arrived, and she was absolutely shocked. She didn’t know what was happening. They told her that she was being sent to an incident, and she thought that [Israeli] soldiers needed to be treated. Then suddenly, she saw Arabs on stretchers. She said to me, ‘What is this?’ And I said, ‘Marina, you’re a doctor, aren’t you? Take care of them. Why do you care who it is?’ This was the first evacuation of [Syrian] wounded to Israel.”
DID THE SYRIANS COME TO TALK WITH THE SOLDIERS?
This was a surprising and unplanned development. Even Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Chief of Staff Benny Gantz learned in retrospect about the entry of Syrians into Israel. Moreno was most certainly the least surprised man at this point. Even as he was caught up in the “incident,” he began referring to the operation as “Good Neighbors” by chance. He was already in the last stretch of his army service, a veteran intelligence officer who specialized in the Northern Theater with long years in the Security Zone of Lebanon, until the evacuation in 2000. The Golan was supposed to be a pleasant tour on the way to the end of his service.
“We’ll give them what they need.” Marco Moreno with a Syrian child.
“A unit of the Golani Brigade caught a shepherd on the fence, as sometimes happens,” Moreno recalls. “I got there to meet him, and he was thoroughly frightened. I calm him down and I say, ‘Tell me, friend, are there rebels in the village?’ At this point we didn’t even know how to say ‘rebels’ in Arabic. We didn’t know the local terminology. And the guy said, ‘Yes, they’re in the village.’ I asked him to go and talk with them, though I had yet to understand the intricacies [of the situation], that the villagers were actually the rebels. We agreed with him that they would come to the fence and touch it. Since the fence is electrified, we would get an indication and come to take them.”
The meeting with this innocent shepherd was not just another day for Moreno and his team. “I know this front upside down and backwards, and in the past when the IDF would catch someone who crossed the border it was some dumb shepherd. So with my long experience running agents I say to myself, ‘Why is it that the Syrians are coming to talk with [Israeli] soldiers?’”
At that point, Moreno understood that the reality had changed. This wasn’t a one-time gift to intelligence, but the beginning of a new channel of communications with the other side which would become very relevant as the echoes of war drew ever closer in the direction of Israel. In time, the contact with the Syrian rebels widened to include more villages and additional groups, and in December 2012, there was a meeting at a base in the Golan Heights which enabled over the beginning of “Operation Good Neighbors” in the months that followed.
THE CONVERSATION OVER DINNER THAT LED TO A BREAKTHROUGH
Moreno recalled how the operation began to develop. “I was at the Festigal [children’s holiday theater production] with my kids, and Tamir Hayman [then Commanding Officer of Ga’ash Division] called me while I was enjoying time with the children. All sorts of officers call me, and I didn’t answer so as not to be bothered while I’m at the Festigal. But the division commander was calling, so apparently it was important. Tamir says, ‘Your friends have arrived’. I sent a Golani unit to open the gate, put [the Syrians] in a Jeep, brought them in, and closed the gate. This was during a Friday evening. I put the kids in the car, dropped them off at home, and went up to the Golan.”
Care given to Syrian children who crossed the border at the “Good Neighbors” base.
“Four Syrians arrived; the shepherd we caught along with his friend and two other former Syrian army officers. I sat down with the officers and saw that they are a bit frightened, so I calmed them down. Before anything else I told them, ‘Guys, it’s Friday. You have to learn that this is a holy day for the IDF. We eat schnitzel.’ I told the supply officer to bring in dinner - the special schnitzel we have on Friday evenings. They don’t eat, of course, since they’re on edge. Then we got down to business. I said, ‘Look, friends, the story is simple. What’s happening in Syria is your own internal affair. By and large we’re not interested. You decided to rebel against Assad, we’ll wish you good luck.
“’But since the Syrian army has pulled back from the Golan Heights and this leaves a vacuum that terrorist elements can enter, pretty soon there could be attacks on the fence, and then we will come after you. So, here is the proposition: Let’s be in contact in order to coordinate. We’ll set up a secret coordination apparatus that nobody will know about. You will prevent terrorist elements from establishing themselves on this front, and in exchange we will supply you with what you need.’ They needed medical care and weapons. I told them, ‘Forget about weapons, you won’t get them. Medical care is something we can talk about.’ Humanitarianism is always important. But that’s the way it is in the Middle East, there are always interests. With due respect for the historical influence and the great public relations that ‘Operation Good Neighbors’ provided, the compensation for Israel in this case was a new intelligence channel that has been established with the rebel organizations in place in the Syrian Golan.”
FROM OUR POINT OF VIEW, ISRAEL IS THE DEVIL
“This is the spectrum [of daily events]: In the morning you meet the Prime Minister on Mt. Bental and give him a briefing, and at night you meet a low-ranking rebel from somewhere. This was our daily routine. That’s how we were driven by the high-level strategy of [meetings with] the Prime Minister down to the tactical level of ‘We couldn’t come from here’ or ‘The food didn’t taste good,’” recalled Moreno – who suddenly found himself dealing with a challenge for which nothing in Agent Handler training had prepared him.
Care given to Syrian children who crossed the border at the “Good Neighbors” base.
“You know what? It was nice, even not so bad. I’m a tough intelligence officer, the most cynical in the world, the most cool-headed agent handler. The turning point for me was getting a phone call one night, and they told me ‘Listen, we have a mother here with two critically injured daughters.’ I had to authorize the evacuation. They were taken to the field hospital, and after a couple of nights I got to the hospital, went to see the staff, and asked ‘What’s new?’ They showed me the mother, and I went over to her. It turned out that she lived in a village some 15 kilometers from the border. She explains to me that the Syrian air force bombed them. They were what was called ‘a rebel village.’ Her older daughter was wounded and lost her arm, and her husband took her in an ambulance to a hospital in Syria. Then there was another attack on the ambulance, and the other daughter was wounded, and her husband killed. She told me ‘I am sitting there screaming hysterically, helpless, and someone says to me, “Pay attention, do you want to save the girls? Head west, to Israel.”’ From her viewpoint [Israel] is the great Satan, and they are telling her, ‘Go. They will help you.’
“She told me how she walked 15 kilometers, at night, with two little girls bleeding to death in her arms. By the way, the doctors told me that she collapsed at the fence. Listen, I look at her and she shows me her daughters, who are alive, and she adds, ‘May God bless [all of] you’. I got into the Jeep and went home. On the way I said to myself, ‘You know what, Marco? Well done.’ I mean, what intelligence did I glean from this poor woman? She has nothing. A mother with two girls. What, we’ll ask her what there is in the village? But we saved two souls. That touched me.”
If there was no operational advantage, would this project have happened at all?
“I don’t know, but I’d guess not. If the IDF hadn’t bothered, then there could have been some local aid, but there wouldn’t have been apparatus for full cooperation over the entire field. In the end it’s simple. There’s an operational problem here which is the fear of terrorist attacks. By the way, how can you solve this problem? You can bring in more tanks and aircraft or you can be creative. Reforming the world wasn’t guiding me at first, okay? As the operation went on the humanitarian aspect developed, but that’s not the base of the issue. But then an officer came up [to me] and said ‘Listen, we aren’t doing enough. We have to evacuate more.’ The officer wasn’t aware of the apparatus and the larger picture. Or the doctors say ‘We have to help more, they need it.’ The humanitarian aspect was established. But this wasn’t the bottom line. Why do you give your children to the IDF for three years and spend your budget? You do so in order to defend the borders of the country. The IDF chose to defend the border in this way. It was the right thing to do.”
THE SYRIAN SOLDIER WHO WOKE UP IN AN ISRAELI HOSPITAL
Moreno’s understanding as an intelligence officer has perhaps changed over the years due to the new challenge that rolled his way, but new dilemmas also emerged, and with them, new security requirements. “I’ll give you an interesting operational example,” he recalls. “When we began bringing in the wounded, the instruction was that the evacuation would be conducted by a company commander or the deputy commander, not by anyone of lower rank. It is always at night. The other side informed us of the situation, and we confirmed. Then the mechanism went to work. The gate was opened quietly, the wounded person was brought in, the company CO went over to him and his team members to search for any bomb or explosive device under the stretcher. You don’t know if terrorists have brought something in. Then we would say, ‘Good. If it’s a man, bring him in naked.’ The officer raises the blanket and sees that there is no explosive device. It’s easier to inspect. What do you do if it is a woman? How do you bring a Muslim woman, naked, to the fence to be inspected by Israeli soldiers – Jews? There was a discussion at brigade level, and the idea was raised to bring in dogs. Let’s bring in the canine unit; they have dogs that know how to sniff out explosives. The dog identifies [explosives], barks, and we keep our distance. It’s a bomb.
“The project is important, we were willing to take risks.” Sending aid to Syrians in Operation Good Neighbors.
“But in Islamic religion and culture, a dog is akin to a Jew barbecuing pork in a synagogue on Yom Kippur – that’s just the way it is; that’s how they relate to a dog. [They asked me] ‘So, what do you suggest?’ I tell him that we have to do danger assessment. We have to assume threats.’ In the end we do this because we believe in its usefulness, until we got the relevant technology – that we did receive later on – screening technology. This was an operational dilemma which also included the moral and cultural dilemma of respect for another culture. Now I have to tell you, honestly I’m not sure if my proposal was smart, though it was adopted by the commanders. I thought about this: What would happen if some [Syrian] woman were blow up the company commander? Improbable? What would we tell his mother? Your son was killed because someone thought that you have to respect the enemy’s culture? That’s not reasonable. It’s not that we came to save another soldier.
“They are enemies. In the end this is an enemy country. Syria has been and is a great enemy of the State of Israel. But this project is important enough that we were willing to take risks, I can tell you in retrospect, although [the risks were] calculated, and we relied on the other side to do its checks. But still, what I can tell you is that I don’t know another army that would do this, not American and certainly nor European.”
What other scenarios of abuse of this project ran through your minds?
“On one of the fronts they brought in a Syrian [army] prisoner, without our knowledge. They took a prisoner, a Syrian soldier. He was wounded, but they wanted him alive to have as a bargaining chip. Now, we didn’t check his ID papers when he arrived. We counted on the liaison personnel. He woke up in Ziv [a hospital in Safed], spoke with the doctors, and then we arrived and he said ‘I am a Syrian soldier.’ ‘[I asked] What do you mean? ‘I am a Syrian soldier, a soldier in the Syrian army.’ We checked it out, and wow, he really was a Syrian soldier.
“I said to our people there [in Syria], ‘Up until now you’ve seen kindheartedness, and now you’ll learn the other side of the coin.’ In a meeting with one of them I said, ‘Tell me. Who do you think you are?’ I pounded the table. ‘Aren’t you ashamed? Endangering the project like this? We’re giving our lives here. He apologized. I told him, ‘Go tell everyone on the front that Haj Abu Daoud said that no wounded [persons] will be brought in because of you, because you are a liar.’ We returned him [the Syrian soldier] to the Syrian army through the offices of the UN. By the way, he received incredible treatment.
Thousands received aid here at a clinic set near by the Syrian border.
“In our world, meeting a source who is armed with a pistol is a very dangerous event. Just a pistol…You have to take care that the handler won’t be killed. In the past, Mossad and Shin Bet personnel have been attacked. And these [Syrian rebel] guys were armed to the teeth. In addition, they also had the mindset of a fugitive. We met with people who for the most part had nothing to lose. For certain, the moment [a rebel] decides ‘I want to kill Marco tomorrow evening,’ it’s just a matter of [his] decision. He has the weapon, he has the motivation, he has the knowledge, he has everything. He only needs to decide. So, the security of our forces was paramount. We took care of it; we had their security.
“Also, we were afraid that Assad would harm the wounded because he wanted to destroy this [operation]. He might bomb the wounded, or [possibly] Hezbollah would do it. Bottom line, throughout all the years of the project, not one bullet was fired from the Syrian side to the Israeli side. Not one bullet! I think it was like this because of the excellent relationship that existed. They really valued the humanitarian aid. That’s one side. We also had deterrence. They also understood the cost of failure. Their enemy was Assad. By the way, I would explain to them, ‘Guys, I know that you won’t hurt us. But I’m telling you, keep alert.’”
How high was your personal level of anxiety?
I worked with a lot of adrenaline and high motivation. It didn’t bother me so much. It’s part of the job. We’re not [working] in an insurance company, this is a dangerous job. You’re meeting with terrorists, Bro, not with ballet dancers. That’s the profession. There was a time when fifteen armed men came running at us, because they were fighting in combat with Assad’s army. We shouted at them to unload their weapons. And how did they unload their weapons? In a straight line, not at 90 degrees. We covered our heads. When this was finished, one of the wounded with them had a grenade on him. They only discovered the grenade at the hospital.”
EVEN IN SYRIA THEY UNDERSTAND THAT ISRAEL IS INCLINED TO PEACE
How did it happen that once Syria was not at all ready to talk with Israelis but now are willing to get aid from Israel?
“These [Syrian] people were in terrible distress because of a cruel enemy known as the Assad Regime, and they were willing to enjoy all offers of aid from anyone. On a deeper level, after several years with them, I think in Syria they understand that the State of Israel is inclined towards peace and not towards war. I think that we are living in a world of freedom of information, and today the Syrian [citizen] is more receptive to information and communication, and I think the [Syrian] people know by watching Israel over the past few decades that she is a very strong and intimidating [nation], but is also a democratic state. She is a state that is not what [their government] says about her. And I saw people who were not at all afraid to contact the State of Israel. I’ve gathered this through our contact with them, our spending time together, walking, sitting down, and traveling together. We saw how well they understand that the [Assad] regime is a collection of miscreants who have told them false narratives. I’m telling you that if there were a different regime in Syria, the peace process with them would proceed very quickly and would have wide public support.
“I lectured in Germany two or three years ago. The JNF asked that I speak before an audience of their contributors from the Jewish community in Stuttgart. I gave my talk, and afterwards a man came up to me and began to speak to me in Hebrew. ‘Wait, who are you?’ It turns out that he is a Syrian, a refugee in Germany from northern Syria with no connection whatsoever to the project. ‘I came to thank you and the IDF and the State of Israel in the name of the Syrian people,’ he told me.”
What other things can you do for us in Syria? What will the effects of this project be?
“I can tell you that, one day, when the war there is over, and it will be over only when the Assad regime moves over, it won’t finish otherwise, a generation will arise and say, ’Guys, these neighbors in the south aren’t so terrible. We have something that we can get from them. They are open to conversation. They are normal, rational people. This is exactly the nation that we want ties with, ties of friendship and peace.’”
THEY THREATENED THAT THE JEWS WILL DRINK THEIR BLOOD
“If you think that Palestinian incitement is severe, Palestinian incitement is child’s play in comparison to Syrian incitement,” Moreno explains. “One day [Unit] 669 [Air Rescue] was training with helicopters in the Golan Heights. Up until then, the decision was made that wounded Syrians would not be evacuated by helicopter. The Syrians [contacts] called us and reported that there was a terrible mass casualty incident, including children, in the southern sector. They came to the fence with some ten children. Ofek Bucris, the division commander, said to me, ‘You know what, if 669 is training here, let’s let them evacuate them.’ The doctors who were in the field said that if they [the children] were not in the operating room within an hour, they would all die. You can’t get to Rambam [Hospital in Haifa] by car in less than an hour. The helicopters landed. Think of the noise of the helicopters, the flashlights, the doctors shouting.
“(I) don’t know another army that would do this.” Aid to Syrians close to the border.
This is how they decorated the clinic on the border that cared for thousands of Syrians.
“I saw a father standing nearby in total shock. I went over to him and asked him what was happening. He didn’t answer. I asked him which children were his, and he pointed at three – one with no legs, one with no arms, absolutely horrendous. I asked, ‘What do you think about what’s happening here?’ He looked at me and told me that in Syria he is a teacher, and then he says, ‘When I was a child, when I didn’t finish eating, my mother would tell me, “Finish your food or a Jew will come and drink your blood.”’ Then he said, ‘In all honesty, I believed that until five minutes ago.’ And this was an intelligent person, not some idiot. This was a teacher.
“And he [the Syrian father] added, ‘The same regime that told these stories about you to its citizens, that you are the Great Satan, they bought weapons, planes, and missiles and told us that they were going to use them against you. He [Assad] ruined the Syrian economy because he bought these weapons. One of the reasons that we joined the revolution was the collapse of the economy, because of the weapons and government corruption. And with these same weapons,’ he said to me, ‘he bombs us, my people. And you, the Great Satan, saves us.’ Then he began to cry. This was the paradox of the entire situation. That I would meet him every day, hear him all the time. You know, at some point I became indifferent, but that day – I recall this – I said, ‘Listen, this is an insane situation.’ At the end of the day, morally and ethically, we could not stand aside in the presence of this genocide. Yes, we began with a clear operational conception, and with an operational purpose. But slowly there was a shift in all of us.”
“We met people at the border who had nothing to lose.”
Receiving Syrian children for medical treatment in operation “Good Neighbors”
“A Golani battalion arrived, straight from the operation in the Gaza Strip. The battalion had just fought in the [2014 Tzuk Eitan] operation and suffered many serious losses. They went straight from the line in the Golan to the war, and then returned. We brought children for treatment and I suddenly saw a soldier, David, from Sayeret Golani [the brigade’s reconnaissance unit] who I remember to this day. A mother got off the bus with a small child, returning from medical treatment, and she was apparently exhausted. She almost fell over with the child. This soldier, a part of the security force, who appeared still traumatized from the Gaza operation, suddenly picked up on this, slung his weapon behind him, and ran to the bus. He jumped up, though nobody asked him to, and he motioned to the mother, ‘Come with me.’ She looked at him, a combat recon soldier, a killer, a brute. She didn’t know where he was two days ago, with her eyes expressing her thanks. He picked up the child and walked slowly with her, not caring that he had left his post, and no one said anything to him. Listen, it was beautiful to see. It was beautiful to see what it does to soldiers.
LYNCH IN THE GOLAN HEIGHTS: PROTESTERS ATTACK AMBULANCE
In 2015 Hezbollah joined in the fighting on the Syrian Golan, and as the fighting intensified, the rebel forces drew closer to the Druze villages, more specifically Hadar, a large village opposite Majdal Shams. It’s the largest of the Druze villages on the Israeli side of the border – two identical villages separated by the border fence. The Druze on the Israeli side no longer needed telephone calls or WhatsApp chats from family members on the other side. At that point they could see with their own eyes the growing threat to their brothers.
“You are the Great Satan, and you are caring for us.” Receiving Syrian children.
The strategic alliance that was born from the actions between Israel and the rebels in Operation Good Neighbors was indirectly also a tool for Israel to defend the Druze in Syria. “One of the clauses in the agreement with the rebels was that they would not strike the Druze,” said Moreno. “They said ‘But why? They are the bad guys; they attack us.’ I answered, “The Druze in Israel serve with us in the army, and these people are their family. That’s the agreement. Respect it.’ They respected it.
The number of serious problems recorded in this operation was impressively low, especially in light of the system of combined risks the IDF was operating in. But with all this, there was one incident that darkened the more than four successful years of Israeli humanitarian aid. We were standing on the main street in Majdal Shams, an area of cafés and restaurants that are a stop for many on their way to Mt. Hermon towering above us. Moreno is at home here; several of the people who pass by us know him personally. There are also some who come to greet him and enter into short conversations. Here, precisely where we were standing, an incident occurred that not only almost destroyed the operation, but could have also devolved into direct Israeli involvement in the Syrian war.
“It happened right here, right where we are standing,” recalls Moreno, referring to the incident on the evening of June 22, 2015. “An army ambulance was evacuating wounded, just like every evening. The ambulance reached this point, right here on the curve, and was hit by rocks. The driver is hit by a rock on the windshield, and he kept driving in the direction of Neve Ativ, and there he stopped. In the meantime, the Druze organized and arrived there, taking the two wounded [Syrian rebel] men from the vehicle, killing one of them. The company commander who was there moved aside because he understood that if he opened fire there would be 300 fatalities. And that is how the lynching happened.”
Marco Moreno is a home in Majdal Shams.
“At 21:30, I got a call telling me that there was a problem in Majdal. I got there and drove up to the upper square. And what didn’t the Druze know? That they killed the brother of the commander with whom we worked to prevent the rebels from attacking the Druze villages. One of the scenarios we were afraid of was precisely this: That the Druze in Israel would feel that their brothers in Syria were in existential danger, and then Druze IDF officers, at least some of them, and Israeli Druze citizens would force open the border fence and run to the aid of their brethren in Syria. We would then wake up to a strategic incident with scores if not hundreds of Israelis in Syria.
“There was a decision here in Majdal Shams to do this. By the way, someone in the upper echelons of the [area] brigade leaked the information to them. The Shabab [young hotheads] here in Majdal said at some point, ‘We’ve had enough. Next time an ambulance comes down from the [Mount] Hermon, we’re going to take it.’ With fake news and social media, this thing built up slowly. People were already fed up. The moment they decided to do it, they hit the first ambulance they came across. They had no idea who was in the ambulance.
The super-heated tempers in the Druze community at this point spread far beyond the Golan Heights. Only the day before, there was a similar incident in the village of Hurfeish. There also, young Druze stopped an army ambulance and tried to wreck it. The killing of the brother of this high-ranking person among the [Syrian] rebels threatened to destroy everything. Moreno explains that, for the first time, the top echelon of the IDF had real fears in the summer of 2015 that there would be a move by Druze officers and soldiers to help their brothers in Syria, which could have seriously damaged state security.
THINK LIKE A LEADER, THIS IS A CRITICAL MOMENT
“I immediately called a meeting, bringing together the rebel commanders that same night, to try and speak directly to their hearts and calm them down. They got to us a few hours later at Mt. Hermon. I told the security detail to move aside. I sat down with the senior commander of the rebels. I made coffee, which it does not usually fall on me to do. I looked straight into his eyes and said, ‘I am ashamed. You gave me your trust, and I disappointed you. I have no excuse to explain what happened today. But I will tell you that those who attacked the ambulance, they attacked an ambulance of the IDF. So they didn’t only attack you, they also attacked me.”
One Syrian was killed in the lynching attack in Majdal Shams.
Moreno continued, “I said that I have no excuses and I won’t tell you fairy tales. But I am asking you, in the name of our personal connection, in the name of the project, hold your people back and rein in your anger. He is your brother, but think like a leader. Because if you let go of the reins, I’m telling you that this issue is done. If you go on the attack, we will overcome you tomorrow. We will fire on you. We will stand by the Druze. It won’t help you. Understand, there are national interests here, military interests, far above our pay grade. And I am telling you that, as a leader, this is a critical moment for you.”
How substantial were these fears? Moreno remembers a meeting that happened that same summer. “A very senior IDF officer was there with me,” he recalls. “We were sitting with a Druze officer, a Lt. Colonel, and I asked, ‘If tomorrow there is an incident in Hadar, what would you do?’ And he answered me very simply, ‘I would pick up my weapon and go into Syria’. He is an IDF officer, and he is sitting there with a major general. Then I asked, ‘Tell me, are you serious?’ He answers, ‘Yes.’ Were I in his place, I would probably do the same,” Moreno states concluded. “If I saw my relatives about to be raped and murdered, and I had a weapon, I would run straight in. I don’t care about anything else.”
In 2018 the IDF announced the termination of Operation Good Neighbors, after the Assad regime regained control in the south of the country. According to the statistics that were published throughout the five years of operation, close to 5,000 Syrian wounded were cared for in Israel, among them 1,300 children. Another 7,000 Syrians were treated at the Israeli clinic that was set up at the border. A large amount of equipment was sent to Syria: food, hygiene products, clothing, diapers, and baby food. Also generators, vehicles, and fuel. Last week, a hand reached out over the border again as Israel consented to the Russian request for aid to Syria in the wake of the catastrophic earthquake. Only time will tell whether history will repeat itself. How will the next commander respond who sees wounded Syrians at the fence pleading for help?