Israel ‘funded Covid vaccine’ for Syria to secure prisoner swap deal

Supplies of the Russian Sputnik vaccine are said to have helped secure the deal

Credit: Tass

Israel is reported to have agreed to fund covid-19 vaccines for the Syrian regime as part of a Russian-brokered prisoner exchange deal between the enemy states.

The prisoner swap was done to secure the freedom of a 23-year-old Israeli woman who was arrested for illegally crossing into Syria at the beginning of February. She was exchanged for two shepherds who had crossed the border from Syria.

It was initially reported as a straightforward prisoner exchange, before Israeli media learned of an unpublished part of the agreement which had been blocked by the country’s military censor.

A source familiar with the negotiations confirmed the reports of the Russian-brokered vaccine deal to the New York Times.

While the number of doses Israel has agreed to pay for remains unknown, reporter Barak Ravid and Israeli news site Ynet, reported the deal was for $1.2 million worth of Sputnik V.  

It is not immediately clear whether the doses are part of Israel’s current vaccine arsenal or will be bought from Russia separately.

Syria’s state-run news agency denied the reports that vaccines were part of the deal for the woman to be released, saying it was part of an “attempt to paint Israel as a humane country.”

The woman, who cannot be named due to a court order, arrived back in Israel, via Moscow, on Friday.

According to the Times of Israel, the deal was initially to release two Syrian residents of the Golan Heights who are imprisoned in Israel, but fell through when one refused to be deported back to Syria. Instead, two shepherds who had crossed the border while herding their flocks were released.

On Sunday, Israel’s Army Radio reported that prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu was looking at the possibility of trading excess vaccines for diplomatic relations with countries Israel does not currently have ties to, in a bid to improve their diplomatic standing in the world.

Eli Gilad, a senior health ministry official, told Bloomberg last week that the country was sitting on almost 100,000 doses of the Moderna vaccine that it was not planning to put into use because of the amount of Pfizer vaccine Israel has.

As poorer countries scramble to get their hands on vaccines, Mr Gilad said the Moderna would “eventually be used”. The news of the Syrian deal and the vaccine diplomacy bid has brought Israel under further fire for only delivering a few thousand doses to the millions of Palestinians living under Israeli occupation.