Keeping a doctor's appointment in Israel, Syrian children and their mothers stepped across a tense Golan Heights border in the dead of night on Wednesday, under the watchful gaze of Israeli soldiers.
The patients, Israeli medical officials said, were not the walking wounded of the seven-year-old Syrian civil war but children with chronic health problems coming across the frontier for a day's treatment in a hospital in northern Israel.
Israel has treated some 4,500 war casualties from Syria since a humanitarian aid program dubbed Operation Good Neighbor was launched five years ago.
The group of more than 40 mothers and children that crossed over in the pre-dawn hours of Wednesday were among the 3,000 Syrians who Israel says have received separate treatment as part of a subsequent operation called "Doctor's Appointment."
Supervised by Israeli soldiers with night-vision equipment, one woman – carrying one child and holding the hand of another – stepped through a gate built into Israel's security fence in the Golan Heights.
After a brief security check, she joined others at the roadside to wait for a bus that would take them to Ziv Medical Center in the northern city of Safed, where a medical clown entertained the children waiting for treatment.
"They are treated in hospital and go back the same day," Maj. Sergei Kutikov, an Israeli military health officer, said. "Sometimes they return twice or three times for further treatment or surgery," he added.
Israel has largely stayed out of the Syrian civil war but it has carried out scores of airstrikes on Iranian or Hezbollah weapon convoys in Syria. Only hours after the latest batch of patients came across the border, sirens sounded across the Israeli communities in the Golan Heights as an Israeli missile intercepted a drone incursion from Syria.
For Israel, the medical aid program can help win hearts and minds in border areas where the number of refugees has increased in recent weeks, as Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces advance in an offensive to recover southwest Syria.
Dr. Michael Harari, a pediatrician at Ziv hospital, said medical infrastructure in southwest Syria has largely broken down, and groups of Syrian children are brought to the facility every two to three weeks.
"We were afraid in the beginning to come [because we regarded Israelis] as Zionists and enemies," said one woman, who brought her son for treatment. "Now we know it's the opposite."
Also on Wednesday, the IDF revealed that it has teamed with the communities in the Golan Heights to transfer donations and humanitarian aid to the Syrian refugees across the border.
Last week, the Golan Regional Council opened a collection center and according to council officials, it was immediately flooded with hundreds of care packages, toys, clothes and food for the refugees, for the IDF to collect and deliver to the Syrian side of the border.
