By Lauren Marcus, World Israel News -
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a classified meeting on Wednesday evening with senior government officials to discuss what was described as an urgent humanitarian issue in Syria.
The last time Netanyahu unexpectedly left a meeting for this reason was in August 2020, when the peace agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates was finalized.
The only information made public about the content of the hour-long meeting is that it involved the cooperation of Russia.
Netanyahu, Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi, and Defense Minister Benny Gantz all spoke with their Russian counterparts in the last few weeks, likely regarding the same issue.
Earlier in February, Channel 12 News reported that Russian troops in Syria were attempting to locate the remains of two IDF soldiers killed in battle nearly four decades ago.
It’s widely believed that Tzvi Feldman and Yehuda Katz, who fought in the 1982 Battle of Sultan Yacoub, may be buried at the Yarmouk refugee camp cemetery in Syria. The IDF officially lists Feldman and Katz as missing in action.
In 2019, Russian troops helped Israel repatriate the body of Zachary Baumel, who was killed in the Battle of Sultan Yacoub and buried in Syria. He was laid to rest in a ceremony at the IDF military cemetery on Mount Herzl, where he was eulogized by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
In his remarks at the funeral, Netanyahu praised Russian president Vladimir Putin for Russia’s help in locating Baumel’s body.
“When I asked [Putin] to help us bring our boys home, he immediately instructed his people to begin,” Netanyahu said.
However, Channel 12 reported Wednesday evening that the matter does not involve the recovery of bodies of Israeli soldiers.
The network said it was about “a humanitarian issue with diplomatic aspects” and stressed that it was completely unrelated to “any IDF attack, nor an escalating security incident.”
Image: Kuhlmann /MSC, CC BY 3.0 DE <;, via Wikimedia Commons
