File image.
There will be no “cross-border humanitarian corridor” to al-Suwayda, a Syrian official told the state-run Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) on August 20, effectively denying recent reports of a plan to ship aid directly from Israel to Druze in the southern Syrian governorate.
Israel intervened in al-Suwayda last month, stopping an attack on the governorate by the forces of Syria’s Islamist-led interim government and affiliated Bedouin tribes.
The intervention, which granted Druze de-facto control over much of the governorate, was justified by Israel’s historic relationship with its own Druze community.
Since then, the government put al-Suwayda under siege, allowing the entry of limited supplies each day. Reports later revealed a plan backed by the United States, which brokered a ceasefire in the governorate, to open an aid corridor from Israel to al-Suwayda.
“There will be no cross-border humanitarian corridor, and humanitarian aid will be provided exclusively in direct coordination with state institutions in the capital, Damascus, to ensure safe and orderly access to all those in need, including al-Suwayda governorate and other areas,” the official told SANA.
“The Syrian government has granted relevant UN organizations the necessary facilities and approvals to carry out their humanitarian missions. Syrian national and relief convoys continue their regular work, reflecting the Syrian Arab Republic’s commitment to meeting humanitarian needs in cooperation with its international partners,” the source added.
The statement came just hours after SANA confirmed that the country’s foreign minister held a rare meeting with an Israeli delegation in the French capital, Paris, a day earlier.
According to the news agency, Foreign Minister Asaad Hassan al-Shaibani met with Israeli officials to discuss “de-escalation and non-interference in Syria’s internal affairs, reaching understandings that support stability in the region, monitoring the ceasefire in al-Suwayda governorate, and reactivating the 1974 agreement.”
Also during the day, a force from the UN Disengagement Observer Force, which is tasked with monitoring the 1974 agreement between Syria and Israel, was spotted near al-Suwayda.
It was later announced that government forces withdrew, temporarily, from the town of al-Sweimra to allow the Red Crescent to recover the bodies of slain Druze fighters and civilians from there. Multiple bodies in advanced stages of decomposition.
Consequently, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a London-based monitoring group, updated the toll from the battle of al-Suwayda to 1,779. The figure includes 554 civilians, mostly Druze, who were executed by government forces and Bedouin fighters.
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All in all, the situation in al-Suwayda remains tense. While the Syrian government is attempting to portray the latest meeting in Paris as a success, there has been no acknowledgment of this from the Israeli side. More escalation in the governorate is to be expected.
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stop calling that bunch of western backed animals the government.