RAMALLAH, West Bank – The vast majority of Palestinians living in the occupied territories have not yet been vaccinated against the coronavirus, sparking a spiteful debate over whether Israel has a duty to vaccinate Palestinians living under Israeli occupation.
But among Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, questions are now being asked of their own leadership, which has been accused of diverting some of the few doses allocated to the Palestinians and distributing them to the ruling party’s high ranks, allies in the media and even to family members of senior dignitaries.
Like many governments around the world, the Palestinian Authority, which has limited control over parts of the occupied territories, has officially prioritized its administrative leadership and frontline health professionals, as well as people who come into regular contact with the president and the first administration of authority.
But in secret, the authority has diverted some of the thousands of vaccines it has received to some key members of the ruling West Bank party who do not have a formal role in government, according to two senior Palestinian officials and a senior party official, Fatah, that everyone spoke on condition of anonymity.
Vaccines were also secretly given to important figures in the main media managed by the authority, according to one of the senior Palestinian officials and two officials from those agencies. The relatives of certain government officials and Fatah leaders also received the vaccines, said the senior official and a former government official.
Already frustrated with their exclusion from Israel’s world-leading vaccination program, ordinary Palestinians now accuse their leaders of accumulating some of the relatively few vaccines that the authority has obtained, even amid an increase in infections and stricter restrictions.
“It is clear that it is understandable and acceptable for the president, the prime minister and the ministers to get the vaccine before others – this is the case worldwide,” said Hasan Ayoub, chairman of the political science department at An Najah University in Nablus. “But there is absolutely no justification for giving the very small number of vaccines we have to others close to power at the expense of those who need them most.”
Several government officials did not respond to requests for comment on the allegations.
In public statements, the Ministry of Health did not admit any irregularity. He acknowledged having received 12,000 vaccines – 10,000 from Russia and 2,000 from Israel. Of these, he says 2,000 have been sent to the Gaza Strip, which is under de facto authority by Hamas, the militant group, and 200 to the royal court in Jordan, where some Palestinian leaders live. And of the remaining 9,800, 90 percent were given to frontline health workers, the ministry said in a statement on Tuesday.
The ministry said the rest was given to officials from the presidency and the first ministry; election officials; some international embassies; and members of the national football team, as well as about 100 students who needed the vaccine to travel.
But the ministry’s explanation seems to have convinced few people. The ministry’s own statements also contained inconsistencies – one mentioned the vaccines sent to Jordan, while a subsequent one omitted this detail without explaining why.
Jehad Harb, a senior researcher at AMAN, a Palestinian anti-corruption organization, attacked the government in a column, saying its distribution of doses to questionable groups adds to other lapses in the government’s fight against the coronavirus.
“This government needs to leave the seat of government and the first ministry because it has filled the country with failure,” he wrote.
On Monday, several Palestinian civil society groups issued a joint criticism of the government and demanded that it establish an investigative commission to examine the matter and publish the names and workplaces of the vaccinees.
Even if the authority distributed vaccines according to strict criteria, the overwhelming majority of Palestinians would still be forced to wait.
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“This is the main problem,” said Ayoub. “The vaccines we have are not enough to cover the highest priority groups.”
World Health Organization officials said they expected Palestinians to receive 37,440 doses of Pfizer-BioNTech and 168,000 doses of AstraZeneca provided through the Covax global sharing initiative over the next three months. Palestinian officials in the West Bank said a larger order for 2 million AstraZeneca vaccines was delayed because of global competition and logistical complications, but said they expected to receive the first shipment in the coming weeks.
Health officials in Gaza said they received 20,000 doses from the United Arab Emirates and 2,000 doses from the Palestinian Authority.
Public anger over the authorities’ distribution of vaccines has followed weeks of criticism of Israel, with human rights groups and others saying the country is responsible for vaccinating Palestinians living under Israeli occupation.
Human rights groups say Israel has a duty to provide Palestinians with the same access to vaccines that their own citizens receive, citing international law that establishes the responsibilities of the occupying powers. But Israel’s policy advocates say Palestinians are responsible for their own health services, including vaccination programs, citing the Oslo Accords signed in the 1990s.
On Sunday, Israel took the first step in providing a significant number of vaccines to Palestinians in the West Bank who tend to come in contact with Israelis: authorities have announced that Israeli medical teams plan to inoculate more than 100,000 Palestinian workers with permission to work in Israel or in Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
Once these doses are distributed, the vast majority of Palestinian adults will still be without vaccines.