JERUSALEM – When a young Israeli woman was released from detention in Syria this week, after being arrested for crossing illegally to Syria, the official story was that she had benefited from a direct prisoner exchange. In exchange for her freedom, the Israeli government announced, she had been exchanged for two Syrian pastors captured by the Israelis.
But if that agreement between two enemy states, which never shared diplomatic relations, seemed too quick and easy, it was. In secret, Israel also agreed to a much more controversial bailout: the financing of an undisclosed number of coronavirus vaccines for Syria, according to an official familiar with the content of the negotiations.
Under the agreement, Israel will pay Russia, who brokered it, to send Russian vaccines against Sputnik V to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, the official said. Israel has given at least one vaccine injection to almost half of its population of 9.2 million, while Syria – now entering its 11th year of civil war – has not yet begun its vaccine launch.
The Israeli government declined to comment on the vaccine aspect of the agreement, while a Syrian state-controlled news agency, the Syrian Arab News Agency, denied that the vaccines were part of the agreement. Asked about vaccines in a television interview on Saturday night, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel avoided the question, saying only that no Israeli vaccine was being sent to Syria.
“We brought the woman, I’m happy,” said Netanyahu. He thanked President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and said: “I will not add anything else”.
The agreement is a rare moment of uncomfortable cooperation between two states that have fought several wars and still contest the sovereignty of a piece of land, the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in 1967.
He also highlights how vaccines are increasingly a feature of international diplomacy. And it reflects a vast and growing disparity between wealthy states like Israel, which have made considerable strides with coronavirus vaccines and may soon return to some kind of normality – and the poor, like Syria, who have not. .
Among Palestinians, news of the Israel-Syria deal has heightened frustration with the low number of vaccines provided by Israel to Palestinians living in the occupied territories. Israel provided only a few thousand vaccines to approximately 2.8 million Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank, and last week the Israeli government briefly delayed delivery of a first batch of vaccines to Gaza, where nearly two million people live.
Israel claims that the Oslo Accords exempt it from the responsibility of providing Palestinian medical assistance. But human and Palestinian rights defenders cite the fourth Geneva convention, which requires an occupying power to coordinate with local authorities to maintain public health in occupied territory.
Israeli officials said they must vaccinate their own population before turning to the Palestinians. But the agreement with Syria sends a different message, said Khaled Elgindy, a researcher and former adviser to the Palestinian leadership.
“Israel is willing to supply vaccines to Syrians outside its borders, but at the same time it does not supply them to a huge occupied population for which they are legally responsible,” said Elgindy. “This seems to send a message that they are deliberately trying to avoid their legal responsibility to look after the welfare of the employed population.”
Among the Israelis, the prisoner exchange raised concerns about how a civilian was able to cross the highly policed and tense border with Syria without being detected by Israeli authorities.
The 23-year-old woman crossed to Syria near Mount Hermon on February 2 without initially being seen by Israeli or Syrian forces, the official said. Your name cannot currently be published, by court order.
Israel learned that she had disappeared only when her friends informed the police that she was missing. She entered Syrian detention only after a Syrian civilian who approached her realized that she was an Israeli and called the police.
Israel then asked Russia – an ally of Syria with a strong military presence in the country – to help mediate its release. Russia and Israel have coordinated similar episodes in the past. In 2016, Russia helped to mediate the return of an Israeli tank seized by Syrian forces in 1982 in Lebanon. In 2019, Moscow facilitated the return of the body of an Israeli soldier killed in the same confrontation, Zachary Baumel.
The woman grew up in an ultra-Orthodox family in a West Bank settlement, and she is said to have a history of trying to enter Israel’s Arab neighbors illegally – once in Jordan and once in Gaza. Both times, she was arrested by Israeli forces, returned, was questioned and warned not to do it again.
Israeli negotiators sought to act quickly to avoid a repeat of the crisis that followed the disappearance in Gaza of Avera Mengistu, a man with a history of mental illness who marched to the strip in 2014 and has been detained ever since by Hamas, the militant group, which often raises the price of its launch.
Netanyahu spoke directly to Putin twice, while Israeli national security adviser Meir Ben-Shabbat communicated with his Russian counterpart, Nikolai Patrushev.
Syrians first demanded the release of two Syrian residents of the Golan Heights imprisoned in Israel, but that agreement was broken after it was discovered that the two did not wish to return to Syria.
Israel then offered to release the two pastors and, at some point in the negotiations, the possibility of vaccines was raised.
The Israeli cabinet voted to agree to the terms of the deal on Tuesday, the same day the 23-year-old was flown to Moscow. After further negotiations between Israeli and Russian officials, it was returned to Israel on Thursday.
In Moscow, authorities did not offer confirmation of such an agreement until late Saturday, and Russian media released only reports citing Israeli publications.
But the Russian government has been skillfully using its vaccine in diplomacy for months, from Latin America to the Middle East. Also on Thursday, Putin’s special envoy to Syria, Alexander Lavrentiev, suggested that Russia would supply its Sputnik V vaccine to Syria in an interview with the Tass news agency.
Patrick Kingsley reported from Jerusalem, Ronen Bergman from Tel Aviv and Andrew E. Kramer from Moscow. Hwaida Saad contributed reporting from Beirut and Carol Sutherland from Moshav Ben Ami, Israel.