As was to be expected, and as with any positive Israeli achievement, the favorable international attention being devoted to Israel’s successes in acquiring vaccines and in vaccinating its population against COVID-19 is being offset by a parallel and concerted wave of international criticism and hostility against Israel among states, organizations and the international media.
This criticism emanates from a number of flawed and misplaced assumptions, or deliberately misleading claims, that Israel is an occupying power, in full occupation of the West Bank areas of Judea and Samaria, and the Gaza Strip.
Following on from that is the mistaken and false assumption that international humanitarian law requires Israel, as an occupying power, to provide medical support and distribute vaccines to the occupied Palestinian population, to provide the funding to enable distribution of vaccines, as well as to ensure and maintain medical and hospital establishments and services.
A further claim relates to the Gaza Strip, governed by the Hamas terrorist organization, attributing to Israel full responsibility for the health of the Gaza population in light of the maritime blockade by which, according to the same critics, Israel willfully prevents transfer of humanitarian and health supplies.
These assumptions, claims, allegations and accusations are misplaced, misguided and in many respects, emanate from a mixture of ill-will, envy and above all, a deep hostility to Israel and to everything it achieves.
Israel is under no obligation to provide vaccinations to the population of the territories.
Israel’s status is not that of an occupying power, and the Fourth Geneva Convention is not applicable to the territories.
Since Israel and the PLO signed the still valid Oslo 2 Accord in 1995, an independent legal regime was established whereby the Palestinian Authority has the full responsibility to govern those parts of the territories that are under its control, including the full civilian responsibility for health and dealing with epidemics, and for importing vaccines and other medical equipment.
The Third (Civilian) annex to the agreement requires the PA and Israel to cooperate and exchange information between them in order to combat epidemics. Nothing more, nothing less.
Israel’s maritime blockade of the Gaza Strip serves to prevent the introduction by Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, of strategic items that can serve to enhance Hamas’s rocket-building and tunnel-construction industries.
Israel does not prevent entry of humanitarian and medical equipment, or food and other items required for everyday civilian life. Thousands of trucks deliver goods daily to the Gaza Strip through the passage points.
Israel’s maritime blockade was sanctioned by the United Nations as a legitimate means of preventing the importation of offensive military equipment.
Clearly, in light of the geographic proximity between Israel and the West Bank, areas of Judea and Samaria and the Gaza Strip, epidemiological and moral considerations require both Israel and the PA, as well as Hamas, to act with a view to reducing the risk of spreading COVID-19.
To this end, Israel and the Palestinians are cooperating and exchanging information pursuant to their respective obligations under the Oslo Accords.
The writer is a retired attorney ambassador and current director of the Institute for Contemporary Affairs and head of the international law program at The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. He is a member of Mivtahi Israel – Forum for a Safe Israel (FFSI).