RAMALLAH – The Palestinian Authority (PA) yesterday said it has cancelled a swap deal that would have seen Israel provide it with one million Covid-19 jabs, as the doses are “about to expire”.
Israeli officials announced the deal earlier in the day, saying the Jewish state would provide the doses to PA as their expiry date loomed.
The authority, based in the occupied West Bank, earlier confirmed delivery “in the coming days” of a million vaccine doses, without mentioning an agreement with Israel.
The Palestinian Health Ministry had said in a statement that Pfizer was behind an initiative to “accelerate the vaccination campaign”.
But, PA spokesman Ibrahim Melhem yesterday said an initial delivery of some 90,000 Pfizer doses failed to conform with “the specifications contained in the agreement, and accordingly, Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh instructed the health minister to cancel the agreement”.
“The government refuses to receive vaccines that are about to expire,” he said in a statement carried by the official Wafa news agency.
Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s office earlier said “Israel has signed an agreement with PA, and will supply approximately one million doses of (the) Pfizer vaccine that are about to expire”, without specifying the use-by date.
“Israel will receive the same amount of doses of Pfizer in September or October 2021, on behalf of what is destined for PA,” said the Israeli statement.
Melhem said PA will instead wait for the vaccines it has ordered from Pfizer to arrive directly.
He did not specify the expiry date of the jabs offered by Israel.
Neither the Israeli Health Ministry nor Cogat, the Israeli military body that administers civilian affairs in the occupied Palestinian Territories, responded to AFP requests for comment.
Virus ‘knows no borders’
Israel launched a sweeping vaccination campaign after obtaining millions of doses of the Pfizer vaccine.
More than 55% of its population, or some 5.1 million people, have received both doses.
On the Palestinian side, just over 270,000 people have received their two doses in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.
Earlier yesterday, Israel’s new health minister, Nitzan Horowitz, tweeted that the “coronavirus knows no borders and does not differentiate between people”.
“This important exchange of vaccines is in the interest of each party,” he said, adding that he hopes for “cooperation between Israel and its Palestinian neighbours in other areas”.
Horowitz did not reply to a request for comment later in the day.
The developments come amid high tensions between the Jewish state and Palestinians with violations of a fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, which rules Gaza.
The truce went into effect on May 21, ending 11 days of heavy fighting.
Late on Thursday, Israeli fighter jets carried out air strikes on Gaza for a second time since the ceasefire.
The Israeli military said they were in retaliation for three days of incendiary balloons launched from the Palestinian enclave.
Last month’s fighting crippled the virus response in the Gaza Strip, where air strikes also killed two doctors.
Palestinian health officials have recorded more than 312,000 Covid-19 cases, including some 3,540 deaths.
Israel has recorded nearly 840,000 infections, including over 6,420 fatalities. – AFP, June 19, 2021
