Two injured Syrians taken to Israeli hospital

Two more Syrians injured in the civil war were brought to an Israeli hospital for treatment Friday.

One of the persons was moderately to severely injured, and the other suffered from moderate injuries, Israel Radio reported. Both were taken to the northern city of Nahariya’s Galil Hospital for medical care.

A total of 398 Syrians have received treatment at Galil Hospital alone since Israel began providing injured Syrians with treatment in the past couple of years. A hospital in Safed, another city in the northern Galilee, has provided treatment for hundreds of others.

More than 191,000 Syrians are estimated to have been killed in the three and a half years of fighting since the civil war began.

Despite decades of hostility between Israel and Syria, hundreds of victims of Syria’s 3-year-old civil war have received life-saving treatments in Israeli hospitals. Israeli medical personnel say that while they’re happy to treat Syrians, the wounded pose a unique set of challenges.

For one, their injuries are often complex, owing to the heavy artillery used in the conflict. They sometimes arrive at the hospital as much as days after suffering the injury, complicating treatment. And the wounded often are wary of Israelis they have been taught to despise, making it hard for Israel to address their emotional traumas in addition to their physical ones.

“As nurses, it’s unique to deal with wounded like this,” said Refaat Sharf, a nurse at Ziv, which has treated 162 Syrian patients. “We hadn’t been used to these injuries, neither in terms of their character nor their frequency.”

Since last year, more than 700 wounded Syrians have come to Israeli hospitals via the Syria-Israel border crossing on the Golan Heights. The Israel Defense Forces has set up a field hospital there, and transfers patients it cannot care for to nearby hospitals. In some cases it brings a family member as well.

Northern Israel’s hospitals have extensive experience dealing with patients wounded in battle — most recently during Israel’s 2006 war with the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah. But in that conflict, the wounded typically received medical attention rather quickly.

Hospital personnel tasked with providing emotional support say Syrians are reticent to open up about their experiences. Besides the trauma of war, there is the additional fear of being in an enemy state. Israeli Arabs who share a language and certain cultural norms with the wounded are employed at all levels at Ziv and Rambam and say they help Syrian patients navigate the cultural gaps they encounter.

JTA contributed to this report.