Coronavirus: Israel gives Palestine a “symbolic” batch of vaccines for its health workers | International

In the aftermath of the World Bank’s recommendation to share its vaccines with Palestine to ensure the effectiveness of the covid-19 vaccination campaign, Israel on Tuesday announced the delivery of a “symbolic number of doses” to the Palestinian Authority to protect your health workers. With the same unused vials accumulated in reserves for a month, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took the opportunity to donate part of the surplus to “several countries” not identified in an official statement.

Vaccine diplomacy is on the rise in the Middle East. Israel – which has already immunized around half of its 9.2 million people with at least one dose of Pfizer-BioNTech and a third of them with the second – sent at least 2,000 vaccines from the lab earlier this month Modern for the Palestinian. health services, to which Russia in turn has given 10,000 doses of the Sputnik V vaccine it manufactures. The Palestine Liberation Organization demanded that Israel, as the occupying power since 1967, take charge of the vaccination of its nearly five million inhabitants in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Netanyahu’s government alleges that, since the 1993 Oslo Accords, the Palestinian Authority has exclusive jurisdiction over its health care system.

A World Bank report released on Monday, however, warned that funding for the Palestinian immunization program is running a shortfall of $ 30 million (€ 24.7 million), while 20% of vaccinations are covered by the Covax program of international cooperation. “To ensure an effective campaign, the Israeli authorities must coordinate with the Palestinians the financing, acquisition and distribution of vaccines against covid-19,” says the World Bank. The Palestinian economy suffered an 11.5 percent drop in gross domestic product in 2020.

“In view of the success of the vaccination campaign, Israel has received requests for assistance from various countries. But we have only acquired vaccines for our population. We do not manufacture them, ”said the statement from the Prime Minister’s office. “We are not in a position to offer meaningful help until we have completed our own campaign.” According to the Israeli press, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke by telephone with Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi on Monday about the delivery of vaccines to Gaza and the West Bank.

The United Arab Emirates, which does not manufacture vaccines, sent 20,000 doses of Sputnik V to the Gaza Strip on Sunday. Palestinian leader Mohamed Dahlan, exiled in the Emirates after having confronted Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, seems to have influenced this operation in favor of Gaza, where he has his political stronghold. Last week Israel detained for two days a batch of 2,000 doses of Sputnik V destined for the Palestinian Mediterranean enclave on the border with the West Bank. Shortly thereafter, the Israeli government reportedly pledged to pay for the delivery of 500,000 doses of the Russian vaccine to Syria, as part of the prisoner exchange deal to free a young Israeli detained after crossing the border. .

Amid unexpected road traffic between countries that are still technically at war, Israel is taking steps to immunize some of the 120,000 Palestinians who come to work from the West Bank every day. Experts from the Ministry of Health consider their presence to represent a focused risk of infection. The Red Star of David, equivalent to the Red Cross, has opened a vaccination center at the Qalandia border post between Ramallah and Jerusalem. The Construction Employers Association, which employs 65,000 Palestinians and 250,000 Israelis, called on health officials to vaccinate their Palestinian workers. “They have been with us in the chops for many years,” reads the letter they sent, “and we believe it is fair and moral to take this step.”

The Hebrew press assures that the beneficiary countries of the Israeli vaccine surplus are Honduras, Guatemala and the Czech Republic, close allies who have pledged in the past to open diplomatic offices in Jerusalem. Czech Foreign Minister Tomas Petricek has confirmed that several thousand doses of the Moderna vaccine have already been received in his country, Reuters reports. Israel regards the holy city as its exclusive capital, although Palestinians hope that the eastern part of the city, which has been militarily occupied for around 54 years, will host the institutions of their future state. Of the 164 countries that have relations with Israel, 89 have an embassy, ​​87 of which are in Tel Aviv. The United States and Guatemala are the only ones to have transferred their legations to Jerusalem.