Israel has granted an "unprecedented" entry permit to a Syrian citizen, so that she can visit her dying sister on the occupied Golan Heights, an Israeli newspaper reported Monday.
Hala Assad Zaidan lives only some four kilometres from her sister, Turkia Assad Batheesh, 78, but the two have not seen each other in 43 years - since Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, DPA reported.
Zaidan lives in the village of Hadar on the Syrian side, while Batheesh lives in the Druze village of Mas'adah, on the Israeli- controlled side of the strategic plateau.
Israeli Interior Minister Eli Yishai told the daily Yediot Ahronot he issued a special permit for Zaidan to pass through the Israeli- Syrian border crossing of Kuneitra and meet her sister Batheesh, who will waiting in an ambulance, on the Israeli side of the border.
The Red Cross-coordinated visit is due to take place in the coming days.
"I didn't believe that this would happen," Batheesh's son, Nawaf, told Yediot.
"This isn't the time for politics," he said. "Also the sister in Syria is very excited."
According to the daily, Israel has never issued such an entry permit to a Syrian national since it occupied the Golan Heights.
A spokeswoman for the Interior Ministry declined to comment when contacted by the German Press Agency dpa.
Yishai told the newspaper he saw allowing the Syrian woman to visit her dying sister on Israeli-annexed territory as a "moral and Jewish religious" duty.
Israel passed a law formally annexing the Golan Heights in 1981.
Some 23,000 Syrian Arabs live on the plateau in four villages, the vast majority of them Druze. They live among some 19,000 Jews from 32 settlements.
Since Syria and Israel remain formal enemies, Syrian citizens are not allowed entry into the Jewish state.
Therefore, families living on either side of the border have since 1967 become all but cut off. Israel does not allow entry to Syrians. Syria allows no entry to Jewish Israelis, but Druze can enter, whether to visit, or study in Damascus.
In the pre-internet past, Druze from the Israeli-controlled Golan would use megaphones to communicate with their relatives on the Syrian side from a high point known as the "Shouting Hill."