Media: Israel Leaves Palestinians Waiting For Vaccines; Truth: Palestinians Never Asked Israel for Help

While Israel this week launched a major initiative to inoculate the country’s population against the coronavirus, media outlets such as Reuters, Associated Press (AP), The Washington Post and  ABC News, among others, were plastering headlines across their sites incorrectly implying that Jerusalem was responsible for the Palestinians’ purported lack of access to vaccines.

At the outset of his Reuters article, Ali Sawafta trumpets:

As Israel prepares to give COVID-19 vaccines to its citizens, Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza [Strip] are scrambling to secure their own doses, which health authorities say are still months away…

The AP’s Joseph Krauss opened by making clear that even as the Jewish state is primed to become the first nation worldwide to immunize all of its high-risk citizens, “millions of Palestinians living under Israeli control will have to wait much longer.”

The Washington Post’s Steve Hendrix began:

Israel, like many high-income countries, is moving quickly to roll out newly approved coronavirus vaccines, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu getting the symbolic first shot Saturday. But next door in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the prospects for vaccinating almost 5 million Palestinians are far less certain, as financial, political and logistical hurdles could delay inoculations against the raging pandemic for months….

Few places offer a starker side-by-side example of the gap [between the have and have-nots] than Israel and the Palestinian territories.

(emphasis added)

Just one problem: the story is completely inaccurate.

Enter The Jerusalem Post’s Khaled Abu Toameh, who, in Palestinians: We Didn’t Ask Israel for COVID-19 Vaccine, clarified:

A senior official with the Palestinian Authority Ministry of Health said that the Palestinians do not expect Israel to sell them, or purchase on their behalf, the vaccine from any country.

The official told The Jerusalem Post that the Palestinians will soon receive nearly four million Russian-made vaccines against COVID-19….

Another PA Ministry of Health official said that he expected vaccinations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to begin next month. He, too, clarified that the PA has not asked Israel to supply the Palestinians with the vaccine.

‘We are working on our own to obtain the vaccine from a number of sources,” the official added. “We are not a department in the Israeli Defense Ministry. We have our own government and Ministry of Health, and they are making huge efforts to get the vaccine.’

(emphasis added)

In doing his research — including reporting widely circulated information derived from a briefing to journalists by an Israeli military official — Toameh fulfilled a fundamental requirement by reaching out to many sides, presenting the facts and thus effectively painting a true and reliable picture:

A senior official with the Defense Ministry’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, [or COGAT, the Israeli body tasked with administering parts of and liaising with Palestinian officials in the West Bank] told the Post that until now the PA has not contacted Israel about the issue of purchasing the vaccine.

‘We will be very delighted for them to do so,’ the official said. ‘We want to see the PA taking responsibility for its residents and starting the process regarding the purchase of the vaccine. Israel is willing to assist them, but first we need to create dialogue. Until now, unfortunately, this dialogue has not happened. We are still waiting for the Palestinian Authority to engage us on this matter.’

(emphasis added)

By contrast, none of these essential details are conveyed in any of the other above-mentioned pieces. In fact, the  AP and The Washington Post rely on statements from Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, widely considered a radical left-wing group.

In a similar vein, Reuters’ Sawafta cites Gisha, another problematic organization, which claimed that, “Israel is obligated to protect the health and safety of all people living under its control, including by ensuring that the vaccine is available in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza.”

For good measure, the AP‘s Krauss contended the polar opposite: “The [1993] Oslo accords require the PA to maintain international vaccination standards and for the sides to exchange information and cooperate in combating epidemics,” he wrote.

And while the Washington Post’s Hendrix  at the very end of his article touched briefly on a statement by COGAT to the effect that, “Israel has not denied any request for medical assistance that has reached its doorstep,” he might have felt compelled to reference a recent open letter to the residents of Gaza posted to Facebook by Israeli Maj. Gen. Kamil Abu Rukun:

We find it important to emphasize clearly that neither I, nor the organization that I head [COGAT], nor any other representative of Israel, has obstructed any request or requirement for the entry of medical aid of any kind. We welcome all assistance, from all the various sources.

In light of the situation, COGAT is allowing assistance from the international community to the health system of the Gaza Strip. So far, many dozens of ventilator machines have arrived, as well as many PCR machines, which have increased the pace of testing from 200 to 2,500 tests a day.

Dozens of oxygen generators have arrived, and hundreds of inhalers for hospital use and home use. Hundreds of hospital beds have been added, and with our coordination, approximately 600 tons of essential medications and medical equipment have been allowed entry, including tens of thousands of coronavirus testing kits.

All that assistance can help the health system to provide care and save lives. COVID-19 pandemic is a global challenge, and it behooves all parties to strive for a solution to that challenge.

Allow me to take this occasion to wish everyone good health.

Regarding PA-run towns and cities, one could not be faulted for assuming that it would have been crucial for reporters to note that for the better part of this year Ramallah entirely cut off ties with Jerusalem over the latter’s now-shelved plan to apply sovereignty to parts of the West Bank in accordance with US President Donald Trump’s peace plan.

The PA’s decision was made, mind you, at the height of the pandemic when Palestinians were, so the media narrative suggests, desperate for help.

Instead, the PA not only refused to accept huge sums of money in monthly taxes and tariffs Israel collects and remits on its behalf, a development, somewhat ironically, reported at various junctures by Reuters, AP and The Washington Post; but also went so far as to on multiple occasions decline the transfer of COVID-19-related humanitarian aid from the United Arab Emirates because the supplies had arrived from the Gulf state on a plane that landed at Ben Gurion Airport.

While it is fair to point out the struggles facing the Palestinians, doing so without mentioning these issues raises ethical questions. Not to mention the omission of the obvious: namely, that the PA would be much better positioned to acquire vaccinations had it not squandered incredible amounts international aid, including for the ongoing purpose of paying “salaries” to terrorists jailed in Israel as well as to the families of those killed while perpetrating attacks against Israelis.

Or, for that matter, that Gazans have suffered terribly under the rule of Islamist Hamas, which diverts massive amounts of funding toward militarizing, rather than modernizing, the Palestinian enclave so that it can continue a seemingly endless terror war against the Jewish state.

Granted, Israel has a role to play in enhancing the lives of Palestinians, but if their leadership shuns assistance then journalists have a duty to inform the public while presenting a complete picture of the broader context: specifically, the gross failure by the PA and Hamas over decades to build the prerequisite infrastructure to enable an ostensible state-in-waiting to meet the needs of its people.