The Israel Defense Forces announced this weekend that it had stopped activity at its Mazor Ladach humanitarian field hospital on the Israeli-Syrian border following the seizure of the Syrian Golan Heights by the Syrian military loyal to leader Bashar Assad.
In recent months, the hospital has provided medical care to thousands of Syrians, some who were wounded in the war in their country and some who needed routine treatment for other conditions but had no access to medical care.
The fighting in southern Syria has displaced more than 320,000 people, according to the United Nations. Many of them have sought shelter at the Jordanian border or the Golan lines with Israel, generating pressure on both countries to provide relief.
In some cases, the Syrians would sneak across the border under the cover of darkness and return to the Syrian side of the border once they had been helped. In others, Israeli medical personnel helped bring them to hospitals in northern Israel for more complex or long-term treatment regimens.
Last week, the military began breaking down the compound. The hospital had been in operation since August 2017, part of a larger and mostly under-the-radar program of Israeli humanitarian aid to Syria that has been operating for some five years.
The Good Neighbor program aims to alleviate some of the suffering of the residents of southern Syria, who are trapped between warring factions and desperately in need of staple foodstuffs, medical supplies, and school supplies. Some 200,000 Syrians have received Israeli aid, which is mostly funded by private donations.
In July, Israel Hayom reported that Israel has quietly been in contact with a number of international organizations, including the U.N. Disengagement Observer Force, in an effort to establish a mechanism to allow it to continue to provide humanitarian aid to the residents of the Syrian Golan after Assad's forces retook control of the area.
