Vaccines for prisoners: the secret exchange between Israel and Syria

JERUSALEM Last week, after the speedy release of a young Israeli woman who had been detained in Syria for crossing the border illegally to this country, the official version was that the woman had benefited a direct exchange of prisoners: The government of Israel announced that it had negotiated their freedom in exchange for the delivery of two Syrian shepherds captured by the Israelis.

But this agreement between two enemy states which have never had diplomatic relations seemed strangely simple and straightforward. The truth is that in secret Israel also agreed to pay a much more controversial ransom: the purchase of an undisclosed amount of coronavirus vaccine for Syriaaccording to an official familiar with the content of the negotiations.

According to the agreement, mediated by Russia, Israel will pay the Russians to send Sputnik V vaccines for the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad., as confirmed by the same source. Israel has already inoculated at least one dose to nearly half of its 9.2 million people, while Syria, where the civil war has just celebrated its 11th anniversary, has not yet started to vaccinate.

The Israeli government declined to comment on the matter, while the Syrian Arab News Agency, controlled by the Syrian state, denied that the agreement included delivery of vaccines. Last night, in a TV interview where he was asked about vaccines, the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu avoided responding and limited himself to saying that no vaccine from Israel would be sent to Syria..

“We brought this woman back, and that makes me happy,” said Netanyahu, who took the opportunity to thank Russian President Vladimir Putin for his mediation management and he finished, “That’s all I’m going to say.”

This unusual deal represents a moment of difficult cooperation between two states that have fought multiple wars and continue to challenge their sovereignty over the Golan Heights, a swath of land that Israel seized from Syria in 1967.

The agreement also highlights the extent to which the vaccine that becomes a piece of international diplomacy. And that reflects the widening gap between rich countries like Israel – which are well advanced with immunization and will soon return to some sort of normalcy – and poor countries, like Syria, which are lagging far behind.

Among Palestinians, announcement of an Israeli-Syrian deal deepens irritation over the low number of doses supplied by Israel to immunize Palestinians living in the occupied territories. Israel has only delivered a few thousand doses to the nearly 2.8 million Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank, and last week the Israeli government briefly delayed the shipment of the first batch of vaccine to the Gaza Strip, where they live, 2 million more people.

Israel maintains that the 1993 Oslo Accords exempt it from the responsibility of providing health services to Palestinians. But human rights defenders and Palestinians Fourth Geneva Convention, which obliges each occupying power to coordinate with local authorities to maintain public health in an occupied territory.

Israeli officials claim that they must vaccinate their own population before dealing with the Palestinians. But the Syrian deal sends a different messagesays Khaled Elgindy, researcher and former advisor to the Palestinian Authority.

“Israel is more than willing to provide vaccines to Syrians, who are outside its borders, but at the same time it does not provide them to the vast population of its occupied territories, for which it is legally responsible,” Elgindy said.

News of the prisoner swap raised concern among many Israelis, when they learned that a 23-year-old civilian was able to cross a hot and heavily guarded border like Syria without being detected by authorities.

The woman entered Syria on February 2 via Mount Hermon, initially undetected by Israeli and Syrian forces. His name cannot yet be released by court ruling.

Israel only learned of her disappearance when her friends informed the police that they had not heard from her. The woman was only detained after being approached by a Syrian civilian who realized she was Israeli and alerted police in her country.

Israel then asked Russia – ally of Syria and with a strong military presence in this country – to intervene to achieve their liberation.

Israeli negotiators wanted all management done quickly, and Netanyahu had two direct talks with Putin, while Israeli national security adviser Meir Ben-Shabbat finalized the details with his Russian counterpart, Nikolai Patrushev.

At first, the Syrians called for the release of two Syrian residents of the Golan Heights imprisoned by Israel, but the arrangement fell when it emerged that the two did not want to return to Syria.

Israel then offered to release two herders and at one point in the negotiations the idea of ​​vaccines arose..

The Israeli cabinet reportedly voted in favor of the terms of the deal on Tuesday and the 23-year-old was flown to Moscow the same day. On Thursday, after further talks between Israel and Russia, she was sent to Tel Aviv.

Until Saturday evening, the Kremlin neither confirmed nor denied the deal, and Russian media limited themselves to quoting what had been published on the matter by the Israeli press, but it has been months since Moscow cleverly uses its vaccine as a factor in its foreign policy in Latin America and the Middle East.

The New York Times

Translation of Jaime Arrambide

The New York Times

More information