Palestinian authority accuses Israel of 'discriminating' over COVID-19 vaccine roll-out

Palestinian Authority on January 10 said that it expects the first shipment of COVID-19 vaccines in March under an agreement signed with the British-Swedish multinational pharmaceutical company, AstraZeneca but accused Israel of shrinking a duty to ensure that the jabs are available in the occupied territory amid the pandemic. Even though Israel has reportedly already become the world leader in COVID-19 immunisations per capita, the Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip have reportedly not yet received the first jabs.

The statement by Palestinian Foreign Minsitry read, “The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates affirmed the duties of Israel, the occupying Power, to provide vaccines against Corona to the Palestinian people, at a time when it provides these vaccines to its citizens, ignores its duties as an occupying power, and makes racial discrimination against the Palestinian people and denies them their right to health.”

“The occupying power has nothing but the recognition of its racial discrimination and its inability to implement its obligations and assume its responsibilities, or to transfer them completely to the Palestinian government to carry them out, with the direction of Israel ending its colonial occupation of the land of the State of Palestine,” it added,

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Vaccine discrimination by Israel: Report

According to The Guardian, Israel transports batches of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine deep inside the West Bank, but they are not being distributed to the roughly 2.7 million Palestinians living in the region. The Palestinian Authority, which maintains limited self-rule in the territories, has said that optimistically, the shots could arrive within the next two weeks. 

The director-general of the Palestinian health ministry has estimated that the first vaccines would probably arrive in February. And those would be through a WHO-led partnership called COVAX, which has pledged to vaccinate 20 per cent of Palestinians. However, as the COVAX vaccines have not yet gained “emergency use”, Gerald Rockenschaub, the head of the office at WHO Jerusalem, said it could be “early to mid-2021” before the vaccine was available for distribution in the Palestinian territories. 

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