RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) – Israel’s spring of hope unfolds with the Palestinians’ winter of despair.
More than half of Israel’s population of 9.3 million was vaccinated and the shots decreased. There is enough surplus that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants to send thousands of doses to friendly countries. Hotels and restaurants will reopen next week.
In the Israeli-occupied West Bank, the COVID-19 wards have been overloaded, testing centers are as busy as ever and new closure measures have been announced. The Palestinian Authority has purchased only a few thousand doses – not even enough for health workers up front – and on Tuesday alone reported nearly 2,000 new cases.
This is a clear illustration of the difference at the heart of the conflict in the Middle East – one of the few aspects of life that has not changed in recent years.
Israel cites previous agreements that say the PA is responsible for health care in areas it administers. Human rights groups say Israel is shaking off its obligations as an occupying power. The PA, perhaps out of concern for its own image, maintains that it has secured its own stock.
Meanwhile, the West Bank’s hospitals are filling up. A woman who identified herself as Umm Bashar brought her mother to the main hospital in Ramallah two days ago after her oxygen levels dropped. She is still waiting in the emergency unit for a bed in a newly expanded COVID-19 section.
“They told us that because of the coronavirus, all the beds were full,” she said. “Everything became very difficult.”
An emergency physician, who was not authorized to speak to reporters and therefore spoke on condition of anonymity, said 14 suspected COVID-19 patients showed up Tuesday morning, a day after 24 were transferred to a ward for the treatment of the disease.
In a test center across the city, numerous people gathered in an auditorium to wait. Many showed symptoms, and some said members of their households tested positive.
“The outbreak is very bad, and the cases themselves are very bad, worse than in the beginning,” said Tayeb Zeineddin, who has been working at the test center since the pandemic. He said more than 1,000 people turn up for tests daily. .
The Palestinian Authority has reported more than 130,000 cases in the West Bank since the outbreak, including at least 1,819 cases. At least 1,510 have died and dozens are in intensive care. In Gaza, which is ruled by the militant Hamas group and under an Israeli-Egyptian blockade, authorities have reported more than 55,000 cases and at least 553 deaths.
The consequences extend far beyond the disease itself.
The World Bank estimates that the Palestinian economy will shrink by 11.5% in 2020, with the tourism and restaurant sectors particularly hard hit. Unemployment on the West Bank has risen to 15% this year, and about 1.4 million Palestinians are living in poverty, he said last month.
Israel launched one of the world’s most successful vaccination campaigns in December after Netanyahu secured millions of doses from the drug giants Pfizer and Moderna. Demand has dropped after nearly 5 million people received at least one dose, and Israel is now using a mix of incentives and threats to try to keep the shots free.
In recent days, Netanyahu has come under fire for allegedly planning to share tens of thousands of surplus vaccines with allies in Africa, Europe and Latin America, while providing little to the Palestinians. Israeli media said Netanyahu wanted to reward countries that support Israel’s claim to the disputed Jerusalem and those with emerging ties with Israel. The Attorney General of Israel froze the program and determined that Netanyahu had acted improperly alone.
While Israel has vaccinated its own Arab population, Israel has provided only 2,000 doses of Moderna to the Palestinian Authority, and it recently approved plans to vaccinate the more than 100,000 West Bank Palestinians working in Israel and Jewish settlements.
Israeli public health officials urged the government to go even further and vaccinate the entire West Bank population, given the high degree of interaction between the sides.
“There is no justification for public health or moral argument for not providing vaccines to Palestinians,” two leading public health experts wrote in a headline in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. A joint public health response between Israel, Gaza and the West Bank remains critical. ‘
Israel conquered the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem in the war in 1967, territories that the Palestinians want for their future state. Under interim peace agreements, the PA is responsible for health care in Gaza and the areas it administers on the West Bank, but both sides are supposed to work together to combat epidemics.
“We live under occupation, so they bear a large part of the responsibility,” said Ibrahim Abu Safiya, who brought his mother to the ER overnight on Tuesday and also waited on a COVID-19 bed to open. .
The PA says it has secured tens of thousands of vaccine doses through a World Health Organization program for poor countries and private agreements with drug manufacturers, but has only managed to import 10,000 doses of Russian Sputnik V vaccine. Together with the Israeli vaccines, it is enough to vaccinate 6,000 people out of a population of almost 5 million.
There are some indications that the Palestinians, in the absence of vaccines, are developing some degree of protection on their own.
A recent WHO-backed study found that about 40% of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza have contracted COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic, which indicates a large number of asymptomatic cases.
The study, conducted by the Palestinian Ministry of Health and other official bodies, is based on samples taken from 6,000 people and tested for markers that are expected to be in the blood of those who had COVID-19.
“Probably 40% of the population has already undergone infection and also acquired antibodies and therefore it is currently protective,” said dr. Gerald Rockenschaub said. He was head of the WHO for the Palestinian territories at the time of the study.
More study is needed to explain why the mortality rate would be so low, but Rockenschaub was probably related to the large percentage of young people, who tend to have milder symptoms, in the general population.
A large proportion of those showing the antibodies did not even know they had the infection, ‘he said.
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Associated Press reporter Nasser Nasser contributed.