Areas "C" ... the side of the soft power against Corona

Awad al-Rajoub - Hebron

More than a month ago, retired police officer Mohamed Khalayleh joined a group of volunteers at a checkpoint at the entrance to his town, Samou, in the southern West Bank, as part of precautionary measures to curb the spread of the emerging corona virus (Covid-19).

The role of Khalayleh and his companions in implementing the requirements of the state of emergency and the decisions of the Palestinian government is summarized by limiting movement between residential gatherings, thus checking the incoming and leaving cars and the extent of their need for movement.

The Palestinian volunteer plays his role well at the last point of his town, which is classified within a region classified as A under the control of the Palestinian Authority, according to the Oslo Agreement.

But about two hundred meters away, he and his companions cannot do anything, as there is an iron gate that the occupation army installed at the entrance to the town leading to Street No. 60 settlement within the area classified "C" under full Israeli control.

Action adventure
Control of areas “C” is virtually non-existent except by adventure and disembarkation without coordination with the occupation, according to the mayor of Al-Samu ’Hatim Al-Mahariq, who indicated that about 24 thousand dunums out of 40 thousand is the area of ​​the village classified as“ C ”and is subject to full control of the occupation.

Speaking to Al-Jazeera Net on a volunteer checkpoint west of the town, Al-Mahariq explains that while volunteers manage the movement in the town with discipline and responsibility, the occupation soldiers make holes in the separation wall adjacent to the village, allowing movement in both directions with the occupied territories in 1948.

The incinerators fear that the Coruna epidemic will spread in open areas where there are no preventive measures, and volunteer and medical teams will be chased by the occupation.

Area C constitutes about 60% of the West Bank, and it is almost everything outside the Palestinian population centers, and nearly four hundred thousand Palestinians live, according to the last Palestinian census in 2017.

Since these areas constitute the flank of the Palestinian Authority in controlling the outbreak of the Corona disease, they formed committees of volunteers consisting mainly of affiliates of the Fatah movement that leads the government to take precautionary measures to confront the disease in those areas.

Workers weak link
Official data confirm that most of the recorded cases of those infected with the Coronavirus are workers and contacts with them, due to the inability to control their movement, and the exploitation of "C" areas to evade the Green Line and return from there.

According to the data of the Palestinian Ministry of Health as of Sunday morning, there were two deaths and 268 cases of corona disease, including 90 injuries to workers inside the Green Line, in addition to 107 contacts with injured workers.

Unusually, dozens of volunteers and members of the Palestinian security services deployed along the 60th settlement line south of Hebron to track down workers trying to cross the barbed wire towards the Green Line.

Since that area is classified as "C", Palestinian security is not permitted to carry weapons or be in uniform.

A member of the Fatah movement in the villages of southern Hebron, Muhammad Al-Rajoub, openly accuses the occupation authorities of interfering to spread the epidemic in the Palestinian cities, by creating holes in the wall inside Area C that allow workers and others to enter through the Green Line, while continuing to close the main crossings.

He said controlling the movement of 250,000 people in the villages of southern Hebron and along the lines of contact with the 48 lands is a difficult task, yet the security services and Fatah volunteers are taking measures to reduce them as much as possible, given the widespread epidemic in Israeli cities.

The transmission of the epidemic
According to the head of the Wall Authority in the Palestinian Authority, Walid Assaf, the occupation authorities took advantage of the Corona pandemic to expand settlements, establish new settlement outposts, and demolish Palestinian homes and barracks in Area C, investing the Corona pandemic to “displace more of the Palestinian population in continuation of the policy of ethnic cleansing.”

Assaf added to Al-Jazeera Net that the occupation forces opened the gates of the wall and water ferries, to help smuggle Palestinian workers to work inside Israel away from the official crossings controlled by the Palestinian authorities, and thus help to transfer the epidemic to the Palestinian territories, citing the data of the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

He said that the Wall Authority distributed protective tools and tents in "C" areas for the use of volunteers, in addition to the presence of special committees operating throughout the year that increased their role in the pandemic.

Jerusalem is more complicated
And in occupied Jerusalem, the matter becomes more complicated, as some 130,000 Jerusalemites - out of about 450,000 in the 1967 occupied part of Jerusalem - live in areas that administratively belong to the borders of the occupation municipality in Jerusalem and carry the city's identity, but they are outside the separation wall.

Despite Israeli approval for the Palestinian Authority to intervene to take measures in the face of Corona in the vicinity of the city - especially the areas classified as "B" - the occupation authorities have chased Palestinian officials inside the city who have taken preventive measures in Palestinian towns and neighborhoods within the city.

The Director General of Primary Care at the Palestinian Ministry of Health, Kamal Al-Sakhrah, said in a press briefing on Sunday morning that the occupation authorities refuse to cooperate with regard to the Jerusalem area, and refuse to take samples from citizens or any action in the city, suggesting that soon decisions can be taken regarding the exercise of tasks inside Jerusalem.

The Israeli media went on to criticize the Palestinian steps, accusing the authority of exploiting the Corona crisis and increasing its operations in East Jerusalem "in violation of the Oslo agreements," according to the writer and former intelligence officer Yoni Bin Menachem.

The writer spoke about "the danger of widening the Israeli government vacuum in the region and entering the Palestinian Authority, which claims that international law is sovereignty in East Jerusalem, not Israel."