Israeli Humanitarian Operations During the Syrian Civil War

The humanitarian effort comprised three overlapping forms of activity: emergency medical care that began before Operation Good Neighbor, the formal IDF administration established in 2016, and independent work by Israeli, Jewish, American, and other international organizations. Assistance ranged from hospital treatment and border clinics to deliveries of food, fuel, medicine, generators, tents, clothing, and water infrastructure.[1][4]

Operation Good Neighbor concentrated principally on communities in southwestern Syria near the Golan Heights. Although Israel maintained a stated policy of noninvolvement in the civil war, the operation combined humanitarian objectives with the security aim of encouraging stability and reducing hostility near the border.[2][5]

An INSS study traces the official Israeli aid effort to 2012, when an IDF officer picked up a wounded Syrian at the border—an informal act that preceded an institutionalized program. A field hospital in the Golan Heights followed, and the initiative gradually expanded to include treatment in Israeli hospitals and material assistance to villages in the Syrian Golan.[1]

The first evacuation of wounded Syrians to an Israeli civilian hospital took place in February 2013, when the IDF brought seven severely wounded Syrians to Ziv Medical Center in Safed without prior notice. Ynet described it as the first arrival of wounded Syrians at a civilian hospital in Israel.[6] A field hospital also operated along the Israeli-Syrian border during the early period of the medical response.[7]

The Israeli government expanded humanitarian treatment to civilian hospitals in March 2013. Galilee Medical Center in Nahariya became one of the principal receiving facilities: by May 2017, it had treated 1,600 Syrians, a third of them women and children. Center director Masad Barhoum said the patients stayed an average of 23 days and underwent more than ten operations on average.[7] "Each one is a human being who underwent a tragedy and each one has a story that breaks our hearts," Barhoum told the American Jewish Committee.[7]

By August 2017, Ziv Medical Center had treated more than 1,000 Syrians, including women and children with severe gunshot, blast, and shrapnel injuries.[6] The U.S. Department of State's 2016 human-rights report independently noted that the Israeli government facilitated the entry of several hundred Syrian nationals, including Druze, for medical treatment.[8] Independent Israeli and Jewish NGOs also supplied medical equipment, food, clinics, and other assistance through operations in Jordan, Turkey, and Syria, often covertly.[1]

In May 2016, Israel announced a dedicated IDF liaison unit to manage growing contacts with Syrian civilians across the northeastern border.[1] The IDF Northern Command formally established Operation Good Neighbor headquarters in June 2016, with its first coordinated activities taking place in August. Its stated goal was to provide humanitarian aid to as many people as possible while maintaining Israel's policy of noninvolvement in the Syrian conflict.[2]

The primary intended recipients were approximately 200,000 residents of the Hauran region in southwestern Syria. Contemporary accounts described mostly farming communities in about 80 villages and towns in rebel-controlled areas not affiliated with ISIS, within a strip roughly 40 kilometers long and 15 kilometers deep.[2][6] About 400 families were living in tents near the border, roughly a third of recipients were displaced people or refugees, and half were under 18.[2]

The IDF's stated rationale had two components. IDF Northern Command chief medical officer Col. Dr. Noam Fink described a moral imperative not to stand by during a severe humanitarian crisis and a security interest in creating a less hostile environment across the border.[5] The IDF's own account likewise said that assistance was intended both to help innocent civilians and to improve Israeli security.[2]

Officials involved in the operation also presented humanitarian values as the immediate basis for the aid while expressing hope that it would change Syrian attitudes toward Israel and help keep the border quiet.[9]

N12 reported that the administration maintained contact with village heads, doctors, and other civilian figures near the fence. It described the effort as intended both to assist residents and to build understandings with the population in hopes of restraining terrorism and preventing hostile incidents, while sustaining a stated policy of nonintervention in the fighting.[10] A U.S. Senate resolution introduced in April 2019 said the operation worked with American organizations, including faith-based groups, to establish partnerships between the IDF and Syrian NGOs and create a channel for aid deliveries into southern Syria.[4]

Medical assistance was the operation's most visible component. What began as emergency treatment for war wounds expanded to care for sick and chronically ill Syrians who could not obtain treatment from the collapsed Syrian health system.[11] IDF-based reporting recorded more than 4,000 people brought into Israel for medical care during the operation.[2] Principal receiving institutions included Galilee Medical Center in Nahariya, Ziv Medical Center in Safed, and Poriya Medical Center.[12][11]

The program also developed clinic-based care near the border. In July 2017, Ynet reported that a clinic was being completed at an unused military post on the eastern side of the security fence, with the IDF providing infrastructure and American personnel responsible for its operation and funding.[13] A March 2018 Globes report said a U.S.-operated clinic on the Syrian side, under Israeli protection, had treated another 4,000 patients since the preceding August.[11] The day clinic was later identified as Mazor Ladach.[3]

Frontier Alliance International (FAI) medical teams operated on the Syrian side for approximately a year and a half. They ran field clinics providing family medicine, trauma services, treatment for chronic illnesses, and maternity care; they also stabilized casualties and referred complex patients to Israeli hospitals.[14] The first FAI team entered a Syrian village in June 2017, and approximately 40 volunteers crossed from Israel during the engagement. Teams worked under shelling and with shortages of basic equipment and pain medication.[14]

One volunteer doctor amputated an injured man's leg to save his life; the patient was then transported by donkey to Israel and treated at a hospital in Nahariya. FAI teams also helped deliver hundreds of babies during the operation.[14]

A weekly bus brought Syrian children to the border for medical appointments, follow-up care, clothing, and recreational activities in Israel.[13] Insulin was supplied for 100 diabetic patients.[13] Treatment expanded beyond war injuries to chronic and other medical conditions, including deafness, and at one point in early 2018 between 30 and 40 Syrians were hospitalized simultaneously at Galilee Medical Center in Nahariya.[11]

At the program's close, Ynet reported that the broader five-year effort had treated about 4,900 wounded people and that roughly 7,000 additional patients had received care at the Mazor Ladach clinic.[3]

Alongside medical care, the operation delivered food, fuel, clothing, medicine, vehicles, and infrastructure equipment to communities in southwestern Syria. A U.S. Senate resolution described a logistical chain in which goods arrived at Israeli ports, traveled by IDF truck to the Syrian border, and were transferred to Syrian NGOs for distribution to internally displaced people and local residents in hard-to-reach areas.[4]

Aid was stored in a fortified logistics center near the border and later placed on the eastern side of the fence for Syrians to collect.[13] Flour was delivered directly to bakeries, lowering bread prices by a reported 50–80 percent in recipient communities.[13] N12 reported that by July 2017, deliveries included 250 tons of food, 500,000 liters of fuel, 12 tons of baby formula, 55 tons of clothing, and 12 tons of shoes. It also said a damaged clinic had been rehabilitated and donated equipment had enabled the establishment of a maternity hospital in Quneitra.[10]

A July 2017 Ynet account recorded 360 tons of food and about 500,000 liters of diesel delivered during the preceding year, along with 77 tons of clothing and shoes, dozens of generators, and water-pumping systems.[13] An IDF-based account additionally listed 12,000 packages of baby formula and 1,800 packages of diapers.[2] Most assistance was financed by foreign donations, while some basic goods and operational costs came from military funds.[13]

In June 2018, a nighttime operation transferred aid at four points to camps in the southern and central Syrian Golan, where several thousand people lacked reliable access to water, electricity, food, and basic necessities. The shipment comprised about 300 tents, 13 tons of food, 15 tons of baby food, three pallets of medical equipment and medicines, and 30 tons of clothing and footwear. It followed an offensive in Daraa and an estimate that more than 120,000 people had fled their homes; the IDF said it would provide humanitarian aid but would not permit the refugees to enter Israel.[15]

Reported five-year totals at closure included approximately 1,700 tons of food, 1.1 million liters of fuel, 26,000 boxes of medical equipment, 20 generators, 40 vehicles, 630 tents, 350 tons of clothing, 8,200 diaper packages, 49,000 packages of baby food, and 14,000 hygiene packages.[3] The IDF-based account recorded more than 110 aid operations over the program's run.[2]

The humanitarian response combined official IDF-managed assistance with substantial contributions from Israeli, Jewish, and international nongovernmental organizations. An INSS study distinguished the official effort from independent operations conducted with Israeli state support but without formal Israeli participation. It said NGOs supplied thousands of tons of aid through Jordan, Turkey, and Syria, often covertly, including medical equipment, food, clinics, and facilities for children.[1]

A 2018 JNS report quoted an operation representative as saying that the Israeli government had provided approximately NIS 30 million—then reported as $8.6 million—in humanitarian aid, while NGOs had donated approximately NIS 350 million, then reported as $100 million.[9] A Globes report published that March said 90 percent of humanitarian activity came from donations and that NIS 270 million had been raised, mostly for medical equipment and medicine.[11]

American NGOs, including faith-based organizations, coordinated and supported relationships between Syrian NGOs and the IDF.[4] The Senate resolution characterized these partnerships as a model for relations between Syrian and Israeli communities and said sustained deliveries expanded from villages near the border to a broader area of southern Syria.[4] Frontier Alliance International was among the most directly involved partners, with medical volunteers working inside Syrian territory in cooperation with the Good Neighbor administration.[14]

Operation Good Neighbor ended after Bashar al-Assad's forces regained control of southwestern Syria, where rebel groups had held territory during the operation.[16] On September 13, 2018, the IDF announced the closure of the Good Neighbor administration and the Mazor Ladach day clinic because the Syrian regime had returned to power in the south.[3]

The IDF characterized the preceding two years as a period of broad humanitarian and medical assistance to tens of thousands of Syrians and placed the operation within a wider five-year history of aid.[3] FAI's work on the Syrian side also ended after Assad's forces took control of the area.[14]

An INSS publication later noted that mechanisms and some key contacts from the initiative remained available. It discussed the possibility of using similar assistance in the future to support favorable local actors and advance Israeli interests.[17]

The scale of Israel's response—conducted across an active conflict border with a country formally at war with Israel—drew significant attention. Itamar Rabinovich wrote that while Turkey, Jordan, and Lebanon had taken in millions of Syrian refugees, Israel had opened its border to provide "largely unpublicized humanitarian aid" to civilians who remained in Syria.[18] Elliott Abrams wrote in the same 2015 symposium that wounded Syrians crossed into Israel seeking medical help and received it, although he described the numbers at that stage as small.[18]

Amos Yadlin characterized Israel's broader approach as one of nonintervention combined with limited humanitarian and security measures: assisting people crossing the border, responding when fired upon, and seeking to prevent advanced weapons from moving from Syria to Lebanon. He argued that this policy had served Israel's security.[18]

The INSS study described the aid effort as having humanitarian and strategic dimensions. It said the programs could assist civilians while cultivating neighborly relations, changing negative perceptions of Israel, and creating unofficial communication channels with border communities.[1] Some Syrian opposition figures welcomed the medical assistance.[1] A U.S. Senate resolution introduced in April 2019 formally recognized Operation Good Neighbor and characterized the IDF-NGO partnerships as a model for reaching difficult-to-access populations in southern Syria.[4]

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that more than 1,000 Syrians had received medical care in Israel.[19] The U.S. State Department's 2016 human-rights report independently documented Israel's facilitation of medical entry for several hundred Syrian nationals.[8]

The operation attracted criticism over its humanitarian and strategic dimensions. The Syrian National Coalition characterized Israeli aid as cynical exploitation of Syrians' suffering and an ineffective image-building effort, while some opposition figures welcomed the medical assistance.[1] Analysts and Israeli officers also acknowledged that the program combined humanitarian aims with a security interest in fostering stability and reducing hostility near the border.[1][5]

In 2015, Druze attacked Israeli ambulances carrying injured Syrians on the Israeli Golan and near Horfish in the Galilee. A Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs account said the incidents heightened tension between Druze communities and Syrian opposition groups perceived as receiving Israeli assistance.[20] The attacks reflected domestic tension over treating Syrians whom some Israeli Druze viewed as enemies of their co-religionists in Syria.

Separate reports alleged a distinct stream of Israeli support to Syrian rebel groups. A 2017 Ynet article summarizing Wall Street Journal reporting and interviews with Syrian rebels alleged that Israel provided cash, food, fuel, and medical equipment to forces near the Golan, including a reported monthly payment to one group. The article said money was allegedly used for fighters' salaries and weapons.[19] Ynet's 2018 closure report separately summarized Foreign Policy reporting that Israel had armed at least 12 rebel groups and paid fighters.[3] These were attributed allegations and were not acknowledged as components of Operation Good Neighbor's published humanitarian program.

The INSS study recorded concerns about aid reaching armed actors and discussed reports of understandings involving al-Nusra elements in the Golan, presenting them as allegations rather than established facts. Israel maintained that its medical humanitarian aid was intended for Syrian civilians rather than Salafi jihadist forces.[1] The limits of the humanitarian opening were also clear during the June 2018 displacement crisis: Israel provided material assistance near the border while explicitly declining to permit fleeing Syrians to enter the country.[15]