"Good Neighbor" Project
The Good Neighbor Directorate was established in the IDF Northern Command’s/ Bashan Division in 2016 with the aim of helping some 250,000 Syrian civilians in the Israeli-Syrian border area, who were severely affected by the civil war in Syria, by providing extensive humanitarian assistance, based on cooperation with Israeli, Christian and Muslim civilian aid organizations.
Project activity
During two years of intensive activity in an extremely challenging operational environment, facing frequent dynamic changes, the officers and soldiers in the Directorate carried out more than 700 humanitarian aid operations – during which 1,400 children suffering from chronic illness were treated in hospitals in the State of Israel along with 4,500 injured civilians who received life-saving medical treatment there.
The project’s core
The project’s core activity involved the establishment of a field clinic that treated about 8,000 residents together with a maternity hospital in Syria, in which about 1,000 Syrian babies were born. In addition, thousands of tons of food, medicine, clothing, and one million liters of fuel were supplied. In the last operation, the Directorate coordinated the evacuation of over 400 Syrian civilians, members of the Syrian “White Helmets” civil defense volunteer organization, and their families, saving them from certain death.
The project’s core
The hundreds of operations carried out were accompanied by thousands of extraordinary human moments, during which we had the rare opportunity of communicating with civilians living in an enemy country. These individuals, who had grown up under a system educating them to hate Israel, now came to realize that the State of Israel was the only country in the world that had actually come forward to help them, save their lives and grant them hope for the future.
Contact
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