At the beginning of February, more than a quarter of the Israeli population had already received the two doses of vaccine against the coronavirus. But millions of Palestinians in the occupied territories are excluded. Once again, they are being treated as second-class citizens.
«How Israel became the world leader in vaccines», was the headline. De Morgen. No other country has moved so quickly to vaccinate its population. If all goes according to plan, all Israeli citizens will have received at least one injection by mid-April. But what about the Palestinian people, who have been living under illegal Israeli occupation for decades?
«They're stealing our health»
While 750,000 Israeli settlers on the West Bank receive an injection, the Palestinians can only watch. They are not receiving any vaccine. In both Gaza and the West Bank, they are totally excluded from the vaccination campaign. They depend on the Covax programme run by the World Health Organisation (WHO). This programme is highly imperfect. Its budget is ridiculous and the first vaccinations will probably not begin until after the summer.
«This is the worst form of apartheid, it didn't even exist in South Africa,» says Mustapha Barghouti, a Palestinian doctor and coordinator of the Covid team. In the prisons, all the Israeli guards and prisoners are vaccinated, but not the Palestinian prisoners. In one West Bank town, the illegal settlers are vaccinated, but not the inhabitants of the neighbouring Palestinian towns and communities. They're not just stealing our land, our income and our economy, now they're even stealing our health."
Medical apartheid and military occupation
By refusing vaccines to Palestinians in the occupied territories, Israel is once again showing its true colours. According to Israel's largest human rights organisation, B'Tselem: «There is not a single square centimetre in the area under Israeli control where a Palestinian and a Jew are equal.» Israel is not a democracy, but a regime that places one population group above another. The consequences for the daily lives of Palestinians are enormous.
In the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority is responsible for 38 % of the occupied territory. For example, Palestinians cannot simply travel from point A to point B; they often need authorisation from the Israeli army to do so. In addition, the more than 600 military checkpoints make the West Bank an impenetrable labyrinth. Israeli settlers need not worry about this. They have their own roads, which are off-limits to Palestinians.
The apartheid system and the occupation are the main obstacles preventing Palestinians from seeing a doctor or receiving treatment in hospital. A Palestinian woman suffering from breast cancer has no idea whether she will receive the chemotherapy that could save her life. Ambulances are often not allowed through checkpoints and some patients do not survive the journey. In 2018, a 9-year-old Palestinian girl died on the way to hospital. The ambulance had been held up by Israeli soldiers for an hour and a half.
A destroyed healthcare system
Palestinian healthcare has been deliberately neglected for decades. It is totally dependent on the decisions of the Israeli occupying forces. The Palestinian Authority cannot build new hospitals without Israeli permission. At the start of the coronavirus crisis, Israel was still confiscating the tents used as emergency hospitals for Palestinian Covid-19 patients.
In the Gaza Strip, the situation is dramatic: 2.2 million Palestinians are living in open-air prisons, while the coronavirus continues to spread. Because of the Israeli blockade, masks, respirators and medicines are only available in limited quantities.
Gaza's healthcare system has been partially destroyed by Israel's regular military operations there. In 2014, the Israeli army bombed an 80-bed hospital. In August 2020, it stopped supplying fuel to the Gaza Strip's only power station. There were barely 4 hours of electricity a day. Some health centres had to close their doors and were no longer able to treat their patients.
Spread the love, not the virus
According to Israel, the Palestinian Authority is responsible for health care in the occupied Palestinian territories. But according to the Geneva Convention, it is Israel, as the occupying power, that has the duty to guarantee health services in the occupied territories, even if an infectious disease breaks out. It is therefore Israel that must vaccinate Palestinians in the occupied territories.
Fortunately, the Palestinians are not taking this lying down. In the occupied territories, citizens and health organisations are taking matters into their own hands. Such is the case of the Union of Health Work Committees, a partner organisation of the Belgian NGO Viva Salud. It organises food aid, distributes masks, visits vulnerable people and runs information campaigns on the coronavirus for the general public. It is an essential link in the fight against the pandemic and the Israeli occupation.
Article by Jasper Thys, published in the magazine In solidarity (March-April 2021)
