International
Israel plans COVID strike for Palestinian workers and settlement workers
JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel on Sunday approved plans to provide COVID-19 vaccines to Palestinians with Israeli work permits, a move a rights group said did not go far enough to protect Palestinians in the occupied territories.
Palestinians have received relatively few doses to date and lag far behind Israel, which has vaccinated over a third of its population in one of the fastest-growing publications in the world.
After facing criticism for not extending its campaign to Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, Israel agreed this month to give Palestinian health officials 5,000 doses of Moderna Inc. It has since delivered 2,000 of them.
In a much bigger deal, COGAT, a branch of the Israeli defense ministry, said Sunday that it would provide the Moderna vaccine to approximately 130,000 Palestinians working in Israel or in its West Bank settlements.
The program will begin within days, COGAT said.
Thousands of Palestinians working in the Israeli services and industrial sector have already been privately vaccinated by their employers inside Israel, said Shaher Saad, secretary general of the Palestinian Workers’ Union.
He said that under the new Israeli program, Palestinian medical teams would administer shots at West Bank military checkpoints.
Israel occupied the West Bank, along with East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, in the 1967 Middle East war. The Palestinians are seeking territory for a future state.
Israel counts Palestinians in East Jerusalem as part of its population and has provided them with vaccines. But it argues that under the Oslo peace agreements, the Palestinian Authority (PA) is responsible for vaccination in Gaza and parts of the West Bank where there is limited self-government.
Omar Shakir, Director of Israel and Palestine at Human Rights Watch, said Israel was obliged by international law to vaccinate Palestinians living under its effective control.
Vaccinating only those Palestinians who come in contact with Israel reinforces that, for the Israeli authorities, Palestinian life matters only to the extent that it affects Jewish life, Shakir said.
COGAT said the vaccines were being offered as part of efforts (to) combat the spread of COVID-19 and in order to maintain public health and the functioning of the economy.
Speaking to reporters last week before the plan was announced, Israeli coronavirus tsar Nachman Ash said that from a medical perspective, we think vaccinating Palestinian workers is the right thing to do.
The West Bank and Gaza, home to a combined 5.2 million Palestinians, have received about 32,000 doses of vaccine so far – including small donations from Israel, Russia and the United Arab Emirates. They expect more doses from Russia and drug maker AstraZeneca within weeks.
The PA closed most schools in the West Bank on Sunday in a bid to stem a sharp rise in infections of coronavirus variants. Intensive care units for patients with COVID-19 have reached 95% of utilization in the territory, officials said.
Additional reporting by Ali Sawafta in Ramallah; Editing by Kevin Liffey, Susan Fenton and Philippa Fletcher
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