COVID-19 gives Bennett unexpected first win on the Palestinian front

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett accomplished what Benjamin Netanyahu never managed to do, transforming the COVID-19 vaccines into a positive public relations coup for Israel.

From the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Israel has been hammered by the international community for its failure to address the lack of injections for Palestinians, while it became one of the first nations to achieve herd immunity. 

On Friday, less than a week since Bennett’s new broad-based coalition was sworn in, Israel announced that it could help the Palestinians receive up to 1.4 million injections months earlier than planned. 

It is a move, which on top of the one million vaccines promised to the Palestinians under the United Nations-related COVAX program, could allow for up to 40% of the Palestinians to be vaccinated by the end of the year. 

Although the exchange was already in the works under the former prime minister, The Jerusalem Post confirmed, the fact that it went through under Bennett helps set the tone for his new administration.

For starters, it helps establish an atmosphere that would allow President Joe Biden to launch a peace process, if he so desires.

Foreign Minister Yair Lapid insinuated that the move was only a first step. 

“We will continue to find effective ways to cooperate for the benefit of people in the region,” Lapid tweeted. 

It also could change the reaction of the Palestinians to Bennett, who they have accused of being further to the right than his predecessor.

“We estimate that Netanyahu’s policies will not change, and they could even be worse,” a statement by the Palestinian Authority earlier this week said, noting that Bennett and New Hope leader Gideon Sa’ar are “on the right of Netanyahu.” 

Moreover, it is a reminder that the Health Ministry is now under Meretz leader Nitzan Horowitz, who has spent his career fighting for justice and human rights. 

Former Health Minister Yuli Edelstein told the Post that he did not even know the name of his counterpart, yet on the day of the vaccine announcement, Horowitz spoke to Palestinian Health Minister Mai Al-Kaila. 

The minister stressed to Al-Kaila the importance of the move, which will reduce morbidity in the PA, without harming Israel’s vaccine inventory.

“The coronavirus does not recognize borders and does not differentiate between people,” Horowitz told his counterpart. “This important move is in the interest of all parties. I hope and believe that this move will promote cooperation between Israel and its Palestinian neighbors in other areas as well.”

This should help calm the fires of international human rights groups that have accused Israel of skirting it moral and legal obligations to the Palestinians, including Amnesty International accusing Israel of “institutionalized discrimination.”

Finally, it will help keep Israelis safe. 

To date only some 383,984 Palestinians have been vaccinated in the West Bank and 52,291 in Gaza have received at least one dose, based on data from the World Health Organization.

The Palestinian population in Gaza and the West Bank numbers some 4.8 million people, of which around 36% are aged under 14, according to the CIA’s World Fact Book. 

Overall, 557,700 vaccines had been delivered to the West Bank and 225,700 to Gaza prior to the new Pfizer deal, according to  WHO. 

To date, Israel vaccinated only several thousand Palestinian healthcare workers and around 100,000 citizens who work inside Israel.

Inoculating the Palestinians should help prevent cross-border infection, including new mutations, and help ensure public health because of the high-level of interaction between the two populations. 

Israeli health officials long argued that not only from a public health perspective but also from a humanitarian perspective, Israel should have planned to inoculate the Palestinians.

The failure to do so was seen by the liberal Diaspora community, as well as those on the Center-Left of the Israeli political map, as an avoidable public relations catastrophe that provided anti-Israel forces with additional leverage by which to attack the Jewish State.

Had Netanyahu remained in power, this gesture would have been now seen as too little too late. But the timing of the move inadvertently gave a boost to his archenemy, in the one arena where the former prime minister believed that he was the only who could succeed. 

And it gave Bennett an immediate win in the one area where he was least expected to succeed: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.