Six left-wing NGOs have petitioned the High Court of Justice to force Israel to provide enough vaccines to the Palestinian Authority to inoculate its entire population.
“Evidently, the Palestinian Authority has an insufficient number of vaccines, whereas in what is practically the same area, the population of Israeli citizens and residents is almost fully vaccinated, apart from those who decline it,” the NGOs stated in the petition submitted on Thursday by attorney Adi Lustigman.
Those signed onto the petition were Physicians for Human Rights Israel; HaMoked: Center for the Defense of the Individual; Al Mezan Center for Human Rights; Gisha – Legal Center for Freedom of Movement; Adalah: The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel; and Rabbis for Human Rights.
At issue has been Israel’s decision early in the process to inoculate its own population first with those vaccines that have arrived, and only then to provide vaccines to the Palestinians, once vaccines on order have been received.
Israel does not have a legal obligation to vaccinate the Palestinians, having transferred responsibility to the Palestinian Authority under the 1993 and 1995 Oslo Accords.
But it still has unofficial plans to provide such vaccines, when they are available. Israel was able to purchase vaccines early and has already fully vaccinated 50% of the overall population – or 72.5% of the eligible population.
But the PA has barely begun to vaccinate its population, relying on a global WHO-affiliated program that provides enough vaccines to low resources countries, so that they can inoculate 20% of their population. Some 60,000 of those vaccines arrived last week. The PA will eventually receive enough COVAX doses to inoculate one million Palestinians, but that supply will only be provided in small installments throughout the year.
In addition, Israel has donated 5,000 vaccine doses to the PA, and has also supplied vaccines for over 100,000 Palestinians who work within sovereign Israel and in its settlements.
According to the NGOs, the PA can only vaccinate 1.5% of its population.
“The respondents’ current policy and their failure to ensure that the entire population is vaccinated violates Palestinian inhabitants’ basic rights to life and bodily integrity, and represents an ongoing injustice,” the NGOs wrote in their petition. “This situation cannot be justified in any way, and it violates both binding Israeli and international law as well as medical ethics, morality, and sheer humanity.”
The NGOs took issue with the claim that Oslo exempted Israel from responsibility on this issue, claiming that “the Oslo Accords, to the extent that they are at all relevant, do not and cannot revoke the authority of the applicable laws, which require Israel to act to vaccinate the Palestinian population.”