In the past few weeks, Israel has been praised in mainstream international media for being a world leader in the COVID-19 vaccination campaign.

Palestinians and allies have spoken up against this distorted narrative that covers up the reality of the racist and discriminatory reality of Israel’s COVID-19 vaccine roll-out. As Yara Hawari , Palestine Policy Fellow of Al-Shabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network writes in Al-Jazeera, “there is a dark side to Israel’s 'vaccine success story': While it is immunising its citizens against COVID-19 at an unrivalled rate, the Israeli government is not doing anything to vaccinate millions of Palestinians living under its military occupation.”

“1.99 million Israelis, Palestinian citizens of Israel, and Palestinians from occupied East Jerusalem had been vaccinated by 13 January 2021.” In comparison, approximately 5 million Palestinians living under Israel’s occupation in the West Bank and Gaza await to be vaccinated, remind Palestinian NGOs in a joint statement.

Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi, a physician who serves on the Palestinian COVID-19 health committee, writes in the NY Times that approximately 600,000 of Israeli settlers illegally living in the occupied West Bank will be receiving the vaccine, whilst the 3 million Palestinians living in the same area in the West Bank will not. He adds that “The Israeli government’s decision to make the vaccine available only to Israeli citizens is not just a moral injustice, it is self-defeating. Herd immunity will not be achieved for Israelis without vaccinating Palestinians. There are more than 130,000 Palestinians working in Israel and the settlements, and hundreds of thousands of Israelis travel between Israeli settlements or engage in military activities in the occupied Palestinian territories.”

In an interview with Democracy Now, Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib said that “Israel is a racist state and that they would deny Palestinians, like [her] grandmother, access to a vaccine.” She further adds: “I hope our country sees what the Palestinians have been trying to tell us for a very long time, that Israel has no intention of ever being caring or allow equality or freedom for [Palestinians]."

Back in December, Palestinian, israeli and international NGOs already signed a joint statement calling to ensure vaccination for Palestinians. On 18 January, 165 NGOs from the Palestinian Human Rights Organisations Council (PHROC), the Palestinian NGOs Network (PNGO) and the Palestinian National Institute for NGO (PNIN), made five concrete demands to the international community, Pfizer and Third States to comply with their responsibilities. 

Additionally, Al-Haq sent a letter to Pfizer, the vaccine manufacturer, to remind the company of “its international obligations under the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights” to ensure that its vaccine “was not used in a way which would breach international human rights or humanitarian law.”

Following the mobilization of Palestinian civil society, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) issued a statement calling on Israel to ensure equal access to the COVID-19 vaccine for Palestinians, emphasizing that “this differential access to necessary health care in the midst of the worst global health crisis in a century is unacceptable.” They were joined by Human Rights Watch .  

Voices defending Israel’s positions have exploited the Oslo Accords to shift the blame and responsibility onto the Palestinian Authority (PA). In a typical patronizing colonial statement, Israel’s Health Minister told Sky News that “they have to learn how to take care of themselves”, all the while keeping us unfree and under permanent subjugation.

In an Op-Ed in the Washington Post, Yara Asi clarifies that while “Oslo was meant to be an interim agreement, leading to a political settlement within five years...almost three decades later, it is being used to justify Israel’s lack of responsibility for Palestinian well-being during a pandemic”.

The Palestinian NGOs in their statement remind us that “Article 55(1) of the Fourth Geneva Convention establishes Israel’s duty, as Occupying Power, to ensure the provision of medical supplies to the civilian population in the OPT to the fullest extent of the means available to it.” The protections under the Fourth Geneva Convention persist regardless of any agreement between the occupied and occupier.

"Creating the impression that Israel is helping the Palestinians in good faith to tackle the virus while keeping them under occupation, was a remarkable achievement of the Israeli propaganda machine",  adds Yara Hawari.

On its side, The Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Health has also made arrangements to receive more than two million doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca and Russia’s Sputnik V vaccines that the Prime Minister indicated are “on their way” during the PA Cabinet meeting of 18 January.

The COVID-19 pandemic is shedding light on the decades-long struggle of Palestinians under occupation to access equitable and provisional healthcare and medical services. Saleh Higazi, Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Deputy Director tells Vice that “the vaccination campaign is just further exposing this reality where you have a two-tier system – where you treat part of the population you control with rights and protection, and you deny the others.” Tareq Baconi adds by pointing out on twitter that Israel’s historic failure in providing Palestinians with proper healthcare services, pointing out to the myriad of “non-COVID tragedies that are normalised, from cancer patients refused passage for chemo, to the generation of amputees in Gaza.” This attitude of medical and healthcare apartheid, Baconi writes, is merely keeping up with the norm.

 Let’s continue to work together to promote freedom, equality and justice for all!