Tag Archives: Humanitarian Diplomacy

16Aug/16

Humanitarian diplomacy in Syria

Omar Abdul Aziz Hospital in Aleppo was the latest one to be greeted by a Syrian bomb in July of this year, courtesy of the Syrian air force and its Russian training and supplies. Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said those killed “included six children and eight women” in two government-controlled neighborhoods. He said dozens of people were also wounded.

Just last April in nearby Zabbadani, the last remaining doctor, Mohammed Khous, was killed by a sniper as he left the hospital following an operation.

Doctors and medical supplies are hardly available to assist those injured in the midst of a ruthless Syrian tragedy that has taken over 500 000 lives and left many more injured, traumatised and defenceless. In a war-torn country where every second person has lost his home, some help however, is coming from an unexpected place.

A few hours after the hospital bombing, eight children were already in operating theatres in nearby Israel. They have joined close to 3 000 Syrian patients who have found themselves in what a few years ago would be an unthinkable and impossible place. Continue reading

09May/14

Choosing Not To Choose

Nir Boms and Asaf Hazani.Middle East Online

Israelis have used a variety of terms to describe the past few years’ events in the Arab world, reflecting how different actors have perceived the changes. What began as an “Arab spring” grew into a dangerous “radical Islamic winter”; and as Israel’s leaders remained unable to define the nature of the transformations, it became a “Middle East upheaval.” Gradually the tendency to swing between optimism and pessimism turned into profound puzzlement.

Impressed by the domino effect of the self-immolation of Mohammed Bouazizi in Tunisia, Israelis initially saw the wave of protests as a fascinating sociological experiment taking place “over there,” far from its own borders. The country continued to think of itself as separate, a unique case in the Middle East or, as former Israeli defence minister Ehud Barak (2007-13) put it, “a villa in the jungle.” Even the “tent protests” that broke out in the summer of 2011 were seen as an expression of bourgeois discontent, a summer adventure related more to events in the United States and Europe (the Occupy movement, the Indignados) than to the regional turbulence.

Israel initially chose to remain aloof. And although the Arab Spring made Israeli headlines, major developments in Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Bahrain went unremarked upon since they were not seen as directly affecting national security.

Continue reading

16Dec/13

Some Quiet Humanitarian Diplomacy on Syria

The Journal of International Security Affairs

JERUSALEM— In its meeting this past May, the World Health Organization adopted a resolution condemning the “deterioration of the health conditions of the Syrian population in the occupied Golan as a result of the suppressive practices of the Israeli occupation.” The resolution, a brainchild of the Syrian and Palestinian delegates, joined sundry other attempts to condemn Israel in the international and UN-related institutions. Interestingly enough, this condemnation came just as yet another group of wounded Syrians had crossed the Syrian-Israeli border to be treated in a military hospital that was set up for that precise purpose in the Golan. As of this writing, over 100 injured. Continue reading