The Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu, who has faced much internal controversy over the last year, denies having failed to vaccinate the Arab population of Israel. The country is the world’s leader in terms of the efficiency of its vaccination rollout, administering at least one dose to more than half of its population of 9.3 million people, but some have expressed criticism that the rollout has disproportionately favored its Jewish population over its Arab population, including the SNL host, Michael Che. Netanyahu emphatically and vehemently denies that such discrimnation is taking place, and claims that the opposite is the case. “In fact,” he said, “I brought vaccines and went especially to Arab communities, the Arab citizens of Israel, and vaccinated as many as possible.”
However, while the accusations of disparities in Israel’s vaccination rollout to its own citizens is unsubstantiated, there are legitimate reasons to question Israel’s lack of rollout to Palestinians in its occupied territories. According to Netanyahu and the Israeli government, under the recent interim peace agreements with the Palestinian authorities, they are not responsible for vaccinating people in these territories. While this retort makes some sense, it is puzzling why Israel continues to send coronavirus vaccines to other distant countries, while not providing any aid to the Palestinians under its own military occupation. As long as Israel foregoes providing vaccinations to Palestinians in its own occupied territory, there will be vocal criticism from across the globe, including from the UN and global human rights groups.
(Mar 4)