The Syrian health minister announced today (Thursday) that his country will begin vaccinating health service workers next week against the corona virus, noting that the vaccines were received from a “friendly country”, but declined to clarify which country exactly provides the shipment. Syrian health officials said negotiations had been held with Russia and China over the vaccines, but no deals were reported.
According to foreign sources, the deal to return the young Israeli woman from Syria, which was launched about a week ago through Russian mediation, included a special gesture from Israel, which agreed to purchase millions of doses of the “Sputnik” vaccine from Corona to be transferred to Syria.
According to a post on the “Tikkun Olam” blog by Richard Silverstein, an Israeli source revealed that Russia, in order to sweeten the deal, offered Israel to pay millions for several million doses of the Russian vaccine “Sputnik” to be passed on to millions of Syrians and Israel agreed.
According to the source, “Netanyahu and Gantz, who knew of the possible electoral damage to both of them, ordered military censorship to prevent publicity that Israel agreed to finance the purchase of vaccine doses from Russia for millions of Syrian citizens. The exact total price was not given to the cabinet, but millions of dollars.”
The Syrian news agency Sanaa then denied the report, claiming that there was no “secret clause” in the agreement that was related to vaccines. According to a source quoted in Sanaa, “the dissemination of fabricated information is intended to defame Syria and distort the patriotic and humanitarian side of the process.”
He added that “media outlets disseminating such information are trying to polish the image of the Israeli occupation and give it human qualities that it lacks, as evidenced by the crimes it has committed against the Palestinian, Syrian and Lebanese people.”