Palestinian foreign ministry finally takes advantage of propaganda value of Amnesty/Guardian/B'Tselem's anti-Israel COVID-19 lies (what took them so long?)

It took nearly three weeks, but the Palestinian foreign ministry finally decided that the propaganda value of adopting the false anti-Israel positions of Amnesty, The Guardian and many others that Israel is somehow discriminating against Palestinians in COVID-19 vaccines outweighs the honor involved in Palestinian leaders taking responsibility for their own people.

From Ma'an:

 The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates affirmed the duties of Israel, the occupying Power, to provide vaccines against Corona to the Palestinian people, while providing these vaccines to its citizens, ignoring its duties as an occupying power, and discriminating against the Palestinian people and denying them their right to health.

The Foreign Ministry added, in a statement issued by it, this evening, Saturday, that Israel is trying to absolve itself of its duties as an occupying power, and imposes full responsibility on the Palestinian government.

And she stressed that the State of Palestine is ready to fully assume its responsibilities and carry out its duties without compromise, which is what it was and is still doing in the face of the willful negligence and indifference of the occupying power, and the occupying power must only recognize its racial discrimination and its inability to implement its obligations and assume its responsibilities or to transfer it completely to The Palestinian government to do it, and towards Israel ending its colonial occupation of the land of the State of Palestine.

She emphasized that the Palestinian leadership’s search for providing vaccines from its various sources does not exempt Israel from its responsibilities towards the Palestinian people in providing vaccinations based on its duties based on the rules of international humanitarian law, the Geneva Conventions, the Hague Regulations of 1907, and international human rights law as an occupying power.

The Foreign Ministry praised the positions of states, institutions, members of parliament, and legal and international figures who considered the violations of health apartheid practiced by Israel against the Palestinian people.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs called on the international community to pressure Israel to assume its responsibilities, especially Article 56 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which affirmed that the occupying power has a duty to ensure "the adoption and implementation of preventive measures necessary to combat the spread of infectious diseases and epidemics," including these obligations to purchase and distribute vaccines to the people -the Palestinian who is under its prolonged military occupation, as well as presenting him to our brave prisoners in the occupation prison. 

Notice that nowhere in this statement is the Palestinian government actually asking for Israel's help. The entire statement is meant to accuse Israel of "health apartheid" and "racial discrimination" but at no point do they say that they actually want Israel to provide vaccines, and how.

To re-emphasize:

* Under the Geneva Conventions, the PA has the primary responsibility for deciding how to fight the pandemic. Israel is obligated to cooperate with the Palestinian Authority in fighting the epidemic if they ask. They haven't asked, at least not publicly.  (If the Palestinian Authority would refuse to help its own people, or if it did not have that ability, then Israel would indeed have that obligation. No one claims that their own plans for obtaining the vaccine within a few weeks is irresponsible or reckless.)

* Logistically, the Palestinian Authority cannot store the quantities of the Pfizer vaccine that Israel is using because of a lack of specialized refrigeration equipment, so this is moot.

* If Israel would unilaterally build its own clinics in Palestinian controlled territory, which is the only feasible way to do what Amnesty, the other NGOs and news media seem to be demanding, that would be decried as a "land grab" and "settlement activity."  (Previous clinics that Israel has built for Palestinians in need were boycotted.)

* If somehow these obstacles could be overcome, most Palestinians would not want vaccines from Israel because of rumors that they would cause impotence or illness.

This press release is pure cynicism, a crude excuse to push an antisemitic lie of Jews discriminating against Arabs  - even though more Arabs have been vaccinated in Israel than in any other country besides the UAE. 

But the propaganda value of the Israel-hating NGOs relentlessly attacking Israel for weeks meant that the Palestinian government could not ignore the topic, even though it made clear multiple times that it can handle the epidemic itself and emphatically didn't want Israel's help. 

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