Under the terms of the Oslo Accords, the Palestinian Authority is obligated to refrain from incitement against Israel, and to take measures to prevent others from engaging in it.
However, during the coronavirus crisis and lock-downs, and despite Israeli support to the PA and Gaza, the PA and Hamas immediately lined up their incitement against Israel.
The Prophet Muhammad (peace be unto him) orders his followers to do good regardless of others’ treatment. He said, “Do not be people without minds of your own, saying that if others treat you well you will treat them well, and that if they do wrong you will do wrong. But [instead] accustom yourselves to do good if people do well and not to do wrong if they do evil” (Tirmidhi).
Today we are witnessing a new campaign of old incitement: PA Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh accused IDF soldiers of spreading the coronavirus among Palestinians. The senior Palestinian official refused to back down from his accusations that Israel has been responsible for intentionally spreading the coronavirus in the West Bank, after Jerusalem called such claims “incitement” and warned of significant consequences for repeating them.
PA officials also have said that the vast majority of the 261 Palestinian coronavirus cases in the West Bank have been individuals working in Israel, or those who had come in contact with them upon their return. Government spokesman Ibrahim Milhim, along with the PA health minister and other officials, continued this line, saying Israelis are maliciously spreading the coronavirus to the territories, whether by settlers or through the introduction of Palestinian laborers carrying the virus secretly to the territories.
In turn, the Israeli defense establishment has blamed senior PA figures, including Shtayyeh, for what a senior defense official told Hebrew media was “a racist incitement campaign against the IDF and Israel.”
Another form of Palestinian incitement during the corona pandemic has been the spreading of hate through social media. Many cartoons have been published on Fatah’s official website and in the Palestinian press, which have become viral networks in the Arab world. The cartoons have a single message: Israel maliciously infects Palestinians with the coronavirus, including Palestinian inmates inside Israeli prisons.
Israel, through the Civil Administration, has greatly assisted the Palestinian Authority in its war against COVID-19 by coordinating planning, transferring testing kits and large amounts of medical supplies, and by having Israeli doctors brief Palestinian doctors and nurses.
It is not acceptable in Arab countries to receive aid from the State of Israel, certainly not to grant the acceptance of such assistance. The PA is trying to justify the support it receives from Israel by increasing incitement and accusations.
To avoid internal criticism, the PA decided to describe Israel as the distributor of the virus.
The writer is a non-resident research associate at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.