BICOM

During a tour yesterday of the country’s northern border with Syria to assess the security situation, Israel’s Defence Minister Moshe Ya’alon revealed that Israel is providing food, water and other aid to stricken Syrians across the border.

Ya’alon commented “We’ve transferred water and food – including baby food. The villages here are locked in, have no access to anywhere else.” He added, “Given the fact that these villages are besieged and have no access to any other place, we are helping for humanitarian reasons.” According to Haaretz, the food is being distributed in Syrian villages by the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force, although in some cases Israeli soldiers leave aid packages on the Syrian side of the border for local residents to collect.

Ya’alon also said wounded Syrians are being cared for in Israeli hospitals and indicated that such treatment would continue, commenting “We don’t see the situation [in Syria] stabilizing in the near future.” It is thought that hundreds of wounded Syrians have so far been treated in Israel during the course of the country’s civil war.

Ya’alon toured the area and received a security briefing from Northern Command chief Maj.-Gen. Yair Golan and other senior officers. He said “The world is focusing on the disbandment of chemical weapons [in Syria], but there are hundreds of casualties per week in this fighting.” Ya’alon also commented on an incident on Monday in which Israeli soldiers returned fire at a suspected Syrian army position after small arms fire was directed towards them. He said “these are local initiatives as far as we know,” carried out by individual Syrian soldiers and not part of a wider plan. Nonetheless, Ya’alon warned that “there’s no violating our sovereignty. Whoever tries to violate our sovereignty will get hurt… We will continue [to respond] in the future as we have until now,” by returning fire when fired upon.