Visiting the Ziv Medical Center in Safed on Tuesday, United States Special Representative for International Negotiations Jason Greenblatt praised efforts by Israeli hospital staff for providing critical treatment and care for those seeking refuge from Syria’s brutal civil war.

“These are the stories of Israel the world needs to hear, and stories like this show how peace in the region can be possible,” Greenblatt said after touring the medical facility where hundreds of patients received treatment, crossing the border from Syria, a country Israel is technically still at war with, The Jerusalem Post reported.

Israel has provided care for over 3,500 Syrians, both in special field hospitals set up along the border and in Israeli hospitals, including more than 1,000 at Ziv Medical Center.

Dr. Masad Barhoum, the chief executive officer of the Galilee Medical Center and the first Arab to run a medical hospital in Israel, wrote in Newsweek on Tuesday that the idea of “love your enemy” is at the heart of Israel’s efforts to save Syrian lives.

“Those Syrians who arrived in the hospital, sometimes unconscious, and woke up in the intensive care unit soon realized that they were in Israel”, Barhoum said, adding that “at first they were stunned by the devoted care, love and compassion they received from those who they had been educated to view as their enemy.”

The facility provides care for a diverse 600,000 community, including Jews, Muslims, Christians, Druze, and Circassians. “On the entrance to every building in the medical center is a sign with the message ‘A human to a human, is a human,’ and that is our essence,” Barhoum explained.

Some 470,000 people have been killed in the Syrian civil war over the course of six years of fighting and all efforts by the UN to stop the bloodshed have failed. It is one item on the agenda of UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, who is on his first official visit to Israel this week.

“We live in a difficult and demanding reality in the heart of the Middle East: one that the new UN Secretary General will come to better understand this week,” Barhoum stated. “Our mission to provide professional and humane medical treatment will continue long after his departure. This is our way; this is the way of Israel, my country,” he concluded.

[Photo: Ziv Medical Center/ YouTube]