COVID doesn’t differentiate between Jews and Palestinians — both need vaccination
As long as Israel controls Israel / Palestine from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean, it must treat equally the 6.5 million Jews and 6.5 million Palestinians living there. The first, immediate step is to purchase millions more vaccine doses. After all, the virus, unlike the Israeli government, does not differentiate between Jews and Palestinians.
By Sari Bashi
(Translated from Hebrew by Sol Salbe for the Middle East News Service, Melbourne, Australia)
The news that the pharmaceutical companies have apparently succeeded in developing an effective vaccine for the Corona is particularly gratifying in light of the Israeli government’s success in signing agreements to receive millions of vaccine doses. But unfortunately, those senior health officials in charge of the calculations of numbers made a mistake. They only took into account the number of vaccines needed to vaccinate nine million Israeli citizens. They did not include the number of vaccines needed to vaccinate five million Palestinians, residents of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, living under Israeli control and responsibility.
The Palestinian Authorities, being local authorities exercising certain powers, are of course obliged to look after the health of the residents of Gaza and the West Bank. Their responsibility is similar to, say, the Tel Aviv Municipality duty to look after the health of the city’s residents. So for example the city is responsible for enforcing the rules of social distancing. But the activities of local authorities, whose power is limited, do not absolve the central government from responsibility.
The authority and the municipality are authorised to manage areas such as health and education, using money that the State of Israel allocates from the tax money it collects, as well as from donations they raise and taxes they collect themselves, all subject to the overriding authority of state authorities. While the Palestinian authorities are unable to purchase the vaccine themselves, the State of Israel must do so — as part of its duty to ensure equal rights for all who live under its control, Israelis and Palestinians alike.
Since its foundation, Israel has implemented a policy of controlling the land, without accepting responsibility for non-Jews living on it. Already during the War of Independence, the state made a decision to grab as much land as possible, but to prevent its Palestinian residents from returning to it at the end of the fighting. After the Six Day War, the state established an enterprise to settle and Judaise the Occupied Territories and even annex them, in practice or officially, without recognising the rights of their Palestinian residents.
Although International Occupation Law imposes an obligation on the occupying state to ensure the welfare and health of the population under occupation, and despite the obligation imposed by international human rights law to preserve the rights of all living under its control — Israel promotes only the rights of Israelis, especially Jews, including 600,000 settlers . For 53 years, Israel has argued that this discriminatory treatment is temporary, until the “final” status of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank is settled. However, control has become temporary on a permanent basis.
As long as Israel controls Israel / Palestine from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean, it must treat equally the 6.5 million Jews and 6.5 million Palestinians living there. Since the outbreak of the corona pandemic, the Israeli government has abdicated this responsibility. As early as March, when Foreign Ministry representatives were asked if Israel would provide financial assistance to the Palestinian health system, they replied that “the Palestinian authorities must manage the virus in their territory.”
This position is unacceptable. Firstly, the denial of responsibility for the health of those living in the area is accompanied by an insistence that the West Bank belongs to the Jewish people and parts of it will be officially annexed. One doesn’t need to be a qualified jurist to understand the absurdity of the position that the territory belongs to the Jewish people when it comes to settlement, exploitation and annexation, but when its non-Jewish residents are sick — the territory is Palestinian.
Secondly, Israeli control prevents the Palestinian Authority from dealing with the pandemic because Israel severely limits its powers. Since 1967, Israel has controlled the borders of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the Palestinian Population Registry, and the taxation system. For example, Palestinian police are not allowed to operate in 80 per cent of the West Bank, defined in Areas B and C of the Oslo Accords, to enforce restrictions on gatherings, or the obligation to wear masks. In the Gaza Strip, years of closure and “economic warfare” have weakened infrastructure, damaged the economy and prevented the development of the health system from developing and its ability to fund vaccine doses.
Residents of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank need vaccination more than ever. In the Gaza Strip, about 800 new patients are reported every day, and the rate of positive results in the few tests performed there is approaching 30 per cent. The situation in the West Bank is similar. In the Gaza Strip, hospitals are filling up with Coronavirus patients. The two authorities, Fatah and Hamas, have imposed night curfews, but the economic situation deters them from imposing further closures. Palestinians have no unemployment benefits or coronavirus grants. The authority is working to buy vaccine doses, but so far without success.
Since his Bar-Ilan’s speech in 2009, Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and its partners have succeeded in dispelling the illusion that two states exist or will exist here in the future, and that the Palestinian Authorities control the West Bank and Gaza. The long-standing reality of a single sovereign, under which local authorities operate, requires equality in all economic, social, cultural, civic and political rights. The first, immediate step is to purchase millions more vaccine doses. After all, the virus, unlike the Israeli government, does not differentiate between Jews and Palestinians.
The author is a lawyer in the field of human rights and a consultant to the DAWN organisation (Democracy for the Arab World Now)
