Covid-19: Israel announces 5,000 doses of vaccine to Palestinians

(Drawing).

Healthcare staff performing a Covid-19 detection test on a woman in the Gaza Strip, January 14, 2021. REUTERS - IBRAHEEM ABU MUSTAFA

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2 min

On Sunday, under pressure from the UN, Israel announced its intention to provide 5,000 doses of vaccines to the Palestinians.

A decision taken at a time when the Jewish state is carrying out a rapid and massive vaccination campaign, and when Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza still have no access to any vaccine.

Are these doses a real breakthrough or a drop in the bucket? 

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with our correspondent in Ramallah,

Alice Froussard

"We are going to provide 5,000 vaccines to the medical teams of the Palestinian Authority," a spokesperson for the Israeli Ministry of Defense said on Sunday.

An announcement that comes weeks after the Palestine Liberation Organization urged Israel to vaccinate Palestinian prisoners - which has since been done - and provide vaccines to the 5 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.

Because according to international law, more precisely the Fourth Geneva Convention - recalled by the new UN coordinator for the Middle East -, “Israel, as an occupying power, has a moral, legal and humanitarian obligation” d '' help the Palestinian populations to have access to the vaccine.

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But while the Jewish state has ordered nearly 14 million doses for the Israelis, and a third of its population is already vaccinated, these 5,000 doses are, for a senior Palestinian official, "only a symbolic gesture. because they will only immunize 2,500 people, ”he adds.

And if the Palestinian Authority is in contact with 4 laboratories, the vaccines are slow to arrive.

The other doses planned within the framework of a program of the World Health Organization, will also take longer.

And Israeli collective immunity cannot, in theory, take place until most Palestinians are vaccinated.

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  • Coronavirus

  • Health and medicine

  • Israel

  • Palestinian territories