Thread by @FLAHAULT

1/10 - “Last month, Israel began the world’s speediest coronavirus vaccination campaign, handing out first jabs of a two-shot BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine to more than 1m citizens. Millions more are planned.”
ft.com/content/0e2f59…

2/10 - “Next door, in the West Bank, occupied by the Israeli military, and in Gaza, blockaded by the same forces, millions of Palestinians waited for their turn. They are still waiting.”

3/10 - “The stark disparity is not just an illustration of the inequities that await the global rollout of #COVID19 vaccines, with wealthy nations racing ahead of poorer ones to immunise their citizens.”

4/10 - “It is, Palestinians said, an inevitable outcome of a half-century of occupation, leaving nearly 5m people dependent on Israel and the international community for the aid, logistics and co-ordination that a large-scale immunisation programme requires.”

5/10 - “For Israeli officials, it is symptomatic of the failures of the Palestinian Authority, the civilian administration created by the Oslo Accords of the 1990s, which only this week informally approached the Israeli government to procure and distribute vaccine on its behalf.”

6/10-“Until now, Palestinian health officials had been counting on the WHO’s Covax initiative and a possible shipment of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine to provide the bulk of its requirements. It is unclear when any of those will arrive, but certainly not for at least another month.”

7/10 - “Judaism teaches a moral imperative not to show indifference as our neighbour suffers, but rather to mobilise and offer help in times of need,” a petition from the Rabbis for Human Rights group read.

8/10 - “So rapidly has Israel distributed the vaccine — for now officially only for 60+, healthcare and essential workers and those with grave underlying conditions — that tens of thousands of young people have managed to procure one, while thousands of shots have gone to waste.”

9/10 - “Under the 1949 Geneva Convention, Israel as the occupier is ultimately responsible for the health of the Palestinians living in the areas it controls, including “to combat the spread of contagious diseases and epidemics”.

10/10 - ““The Oslo agreements are still legally binding and, with respect to health, it is simply that — to co-operate,” he said. “There is no requirement or obligation on either side to do this, or to do that — it’s simply to co-operate, no more and no less.”