Two Israelis convicted of attacking ambulance carrying Syrians

Two residents of the Druze village of Hurfeish in the Golan Heights were found guilty Sunday of involvement in an attack in 2015 on wounded Syrians being treated in Israel.

The Haifa District Court convicted Kamal Amer, 24, and Yusuf Sharif, 55, of chasing a military ambulance transporting Syrian patients and blocking the road to prevent it reaching the hospital.

Sharif was injured by the ambulance during the incident. The two were acquitted of all other charges.

In the June 22, 2015, incident, the ambulance was carrying people wounded in the Syria civil war to the Galilee Medical Center in Nahariya.

In the early-morning attack, rioters threw rocks at the  ambulance as it passed by Hurfeish. The vehicle was then stopped outside the town and surrounded by several residents, who demanded they be allowed to inspect the passengers, police said.

As the ambulance pulled away, it was pelted with stones, which smashed the windshield.

הדרוזים ביצעו לינץ בפצועים הסורים. התמונות קשות. מצבם קשה. pic.twitter.com/98qIcDzYs4

— Guy Varon (@guyvaron) June 22, 2015

Later that same night, a crowd of Druze again attacked another ambulance, this one as it passed through Majdal Shams, blocking the vehicle and pulling out the wounded Syrians, in what has been described as a lynching.

Police said one of the Syrians died of his wounds and the second man was in critical condition. Two Israeli soldiers were also lightly injured in the incident, apparently while trying to protect the wounded Syrians, who had suffered light to moderate injuries, according to Israel’s Army Radio.

Israel routinely takes in and treats Syrian rebels injured in the civil war, and the Israel Defense Forces has set up a field hospital along the border, though it transports more serious cases to hospitals elsewhere in the country, without regard to which side of the civil war the injured was fighting on.

While Druze living in Israel speak Hebrew and many serve in the IDF, residents of the four Druze villages in the Golan Heights, captured by Israel in 1967, remain outwardly loyal to the Syrian regime and have mostly refused to accept Israeli citizenship.

The Druze are a secretive offshoot of Shiite Islam. Officials say there are 110,000 of them in northern Israel and another 20,000 on the Golan Heights.