Israel says it won't strike in Syria near where American journalist Austin Tice may be held

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has assured the mother of missing American journalist Austin Tice that Israel will not conduct airstrikes near a secret prison outside Damascus where she believes her son may be held, NBC News has confirmed. Debra Tice first discussed the Israeli government’s promise to avoid the area where her son may be in an interview with MSNBC on Tuesday. 

A spokesperson for the Tice family and an Israeli official confirmed the Israeli leader’s pledge to Tice, which was conveyed in a letter first reported by Axios.

“In response to your letter, please rest assured that Israel and its intelligence agencies are fully coordinated with the relevant American authorities on the matter and that the IDF is not active in the area where Austin may be located,” Netanyahu wrote in response to a written request from Debra Tice to the Israeli government this week. 

The ousting of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad has brought Debra Tice new hope in finding her son, who went missing in the country 12 years ago. She believes Austin Tice may be in Mt. Qasioun prison, which is under a military museum and has a hidden tunnel that has not been fully explored.

“They were able to go through the tunnel and go up, but in the absence of the bombing, they’ll be able to make a more thorough search inside the mountain,” Tice told MSNBC on Tuesday, adding, “They’re really searching for the hidden cells, you know, because there are a lot of them.”

NBC’s Richard Engel, reporting on the ground in Damascus, found a cell where a fellow prisoner said Austin had been held as recently as 2022. Debra Tice said she was able to verify that her son was held in that prison. “My children and I, because of something that was written on the wall, we do think that Austin may have been in that specific cell,” Tice told MSNBC.

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The U.S. government does not have personnel on the ground in Syria as a part of the search for Tice, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said this week, but he did not rule out sending U.S. officials if the conditions change. Debra Tice said she has been asking the U.S. to go for 12 years. 

“If you’re pushing someone to do something they really don’t want to do, you’re not going to get a good job anyway,” Tice said. “The people that jumped in and got right in there, those are the ones that we want to have working for us.”