JERUSALEM – The Palestinian Authority on Saturday announced a new set of blocking restrictions in the West Bank, while coronavirus infections are on the rise and Palestinians await the launch of a significant vaccination program.
The move comes at a time when Israel has secured an ample supply of the vaccine for itself and has moved ahead with its own inoculation program, overtaking the rest of the world. The imbalance added a new layer of friction to the former Israeli-Palestinian conflict and attracted scrutiny of Israel’s obligations in the occupied territories.
Blocking restrictions, set to last 12 days, include closing universities, nighttime travel and non-essential trade restrictions and banning meetings for weddings, parties and funerals.
Palestinian Health Minister Mai al-Kaila said on Saturday that 910 new cases and five deaths had been reported in the West Bank in the past 24 hours. Another Palestinian, she added, died in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip after hiring Covid-19.
Three more Palestinians from East Jerusalem, said al-Kaila, have died of the disease in recent days.
About 91 percent of Palestinians infected with the disease since last March have recovered, said al-Kaila. In all, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, there were about 206,440 confirmed cases among Palestinians last year, including about 24,500 in East Jerusalem annexed to Israel.
Israel’s vaccination program extends to all East Jerusalem residents, but many Palestinians there have been reluctant to get the vaccine, in part, residents said, because of low confidence in Israeli authorities and a barrage of unproven negative rumors. about the vaccine that circulates in social media.
Israeli officials say the Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited self-government in parts of the West Bank, took responsibility for health services in its control areas when the interim peace agreements known as the Oslo Accords were signed in the mid-1990s.
Israel vaccinated more than half of its 9.2 million population with a first dose, and more than a third with a second dose, but has so far provided the Palestinian Authority with only 2,000 doses of vaccine and has promised an additional 3,000. More than 2.5 million Palestinians live in the West Bank, with another two million in Gaza.
Israeli officials said it is in their interest to help the Palestinians once Israeli citizens, including hundreds of thousands of settlers in the West Bank, are fully vaccinated. They indicated that they can start vaccinating tens of thousands of Palestinian workers who routinely come to work within Israel and that they can transfer more vaccines to the Palestinian Authority, but no details have been made available.
Human rights defenders argued that Israel should vaccinate the Palestinian population in parallel with its own citizens. They cite the Fourth Geneva Convention, according to which occupants are obliged to ensure, as far as possible, the public health of people living under occupation. An annex to the Oslo Accords also requires cooperation to combat epidemics.
The dispute was compounded by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent foray into vaccine diplomacy, with the promise of sending thousands of extra doses to Hungary’s allies to Guatemala. This effort has been suspended while Israel’s attorney general examines whether decision-making has gone through the appropriate channels.
So far, Palestinians have received 10,000 doses of Russia from their Sputnik V vaccine, 2,000 of which have been transferred from the West Bank to Gaza. Last weekend, another shipment of 20,000 Russian doses donated by the United Arab Emirates entered Gaza across the Egyptian border.
Palestinian authorities expect to receive 37,440 doses of Pfizer and hundreds of thousands of doses of AstraZeneca through the Covax global sharing initiative in March. Additional supplies of the AstraZeneca vaccine are also expected.
Prime Minister Muhammad Shtayyeh of the Palestinian Authority said on Saturday that global competition is primarily to blame for delays in a significant vaccination implementation, but that a batch of vaccines is expected to arrive next week, according to Wafa, the official news agency. Palestine.
Israel is still battling high infection rates, despite its successful launch of the vaccine, and has imposed an overnight travel ban since Thursday in an effort to avoid parties during the Purim holiday.