Israel helps rescue workers escape Syria
‘Exceptional’ gesture also buses rebels, their families north
BEIRUT — Israel has facilitated the evacuation of hundreds of rescue workers, known as the White Helmets, and their families from an embattled pocket of southern Syria, helping them to travel through Israeli-held territory to reach Jordan, Israeli and Jordanian officials said Sunday.
The move in a part of Syria where pro-government forces are advancing followed a push by Western countries including the United States to protect members of the White Helmets, volunteer emergency workers who rush to the scene of airstrikes in civilian areas.
The Israeli army said in a statement Sunday that the United States and European countries had asked for help with the evacuation of the civilians “due to an immediate threat to their lives.”
A Foreign Ministry spokesman in Jordan, Mohammad alKayed, said that his country had authorized the United Nations to facilitate the entry of hundreds of Syrians to Jordan after Britain, Germany and Canada had made a “legally binding undertaking to resettle them within a specified period of time due to a risk to their lives.”
Ayman Safadi, Jordan’s foreign minister, said on Twitter on Sunday that the original request had been for 800 Syrians, but that the final number who made the trip was 422.
The evacuation came as Syrian government forces, which are supported by Russia and Iran, have been sweeping through a swath of territory along Syria’s southern border with Jordan, seizing areas that have long been held by Westernbacked rebels seeking to oust President Bashar Assad of Syria.
Seven years into the war, Assad has taken back the country’s center and is reasserting his control of its largest population centers. But large parts of the country remain out of his hands, held by rebels, Turkey or Kurdish forces backed by the United States.
As the lines dividing those zones have solidified, large numbers of people living in them have been moved, further exacerbating the crisis that has displaced more than half of Syria’s population.
In addition to the evacuation of the White Helmets, hundreds of rebels and their families were bused from southern Syria to the rebel-held north because they did not want to live under Syrian government control. And last week, thousands of members of Syria’s Shiite minority were removed from two besieged villages in the country’s north, emptying them out.
The evacuation of the White Helmets came near the end of the Syrian government’s sweep through southern Syria. As towns have fallen, hundreds of thousands of people have fled their homes, and many, including members of the White Helmets, ended up in the shrinking pocket of rebel-held territory along the Israeli-held Golan Heights.
Officially known as the Syria Civil Defense, the White Helmets, so called for their signature hard hats, have been lauded in the West for their work digging people out of the rubble after government airstrikes. The United States and other Western governments have funded their work, and a Netflix film, “The White Helmets,” won an Academy Award last year for best short documentary.
A second film about the group, “Last Men in Aleppo,” was nominated for an Oscar this year.
The Syrian government accuses the group of cavorting with terrorists and of staging footage of their operations to garner sympathy and demonize the government.
The Israeli army called the move “an exceptional humanitarian gesture,” apparently to make it clear that further evacuations were not to be expected.