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JERUSALEM – For months, human rights activists have argued that Israel has a moral and legal obligation to vaccinate the millions of Palestinians living under Israeli occupation. For months, Israel resisted this argument, vaccinating only about 130,000 Palestinians with work permits in Israel.
On Friday morning, the new Israeli government went some way to responding to its critics, announcing a deal to supply the Palestinian Authority with between 1 million and 1.4 million doses of vaccine. In return, the authority had to give Israel the same number of doses once its supplies arrived in the fall from Pfizer-BioNTech.
But only hours later, the authority tore up the agreement, returning about 100,000 doses delivered by Israel earlier in the day, amid a public disagreement between the Israeli and Palestinian leaderships over whether or not the vaccines are too close to their expiration date.
The authority’s spokesman, Ibrahim Melhem, said that the specifications of the doses do not comply with the agreement, and that it is close to its expiration date to a degree that does not allow it to be administered in time.
Melhem said the authority would instead wait for the direct delivery of four million new vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech later in the year.
An Israeli official, who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak publicly, said the first batch of doses would be finished at the beginning of July, and said that would allow enough time for Palestinian health workers to administer them.
The official added that the authority was aware of the expiration date of the vaccines before agreeing to deliver them, and said that the authority canceled the deal only because it was criticized by the Palestinians for agreeing to receive vaccines believed to be of poor quality.
The official also said that none of the remaining doses could have been delivered less than two weeks before their expiration date.
Negotiations on the deal began secretly several months ago, before the new government of Naftali Bennett was to succeed that of Benjamin Netanyahu, who was replaced by a narrow vote in parliament last Sunday.
The announcement comes after months of debate over whether Israel, where a successful vaccine campaign has largely created a post-pandemic reality, has a responsibility to provide vaccines to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, where infection rates are much higher.
In February and March, Israel gave vaccines to more than 100,000 Palestinians who work as day laborers in Israel, but has resisted vaccinating millions of other Palestinians living under some form of Israeli control in the West Bank and Gaza.
Instead, the PA has requested several hundred thousand doses of the vaccine from the global participation initiative, Covax, and several million from Pfizer-BioNTech. Separately, the United Arab Emirates has donated tens of thousands of doses of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine to the Palestinians in Gaza.
Israeli officials have said the Oslo Accords, interim agreements between Israel and Palestinian leaders signed in the 1990s, give the Palestinian Authority responsibility for its health care system.
But human rights activists pointed out that other parts of the Oslo Accords require Israel to work with the Palestinian leadership during the outbreak of the epidemic, while the Fourth Geneva Convention obligates the occupying power to coordinate with local authorities to maintain public health within the occupied territories, including during the spread of epidemics. .
Israel controls all imports into the West Bank, most of which are under full Israeli control, and shares control of imports into Gaza with Egypt.
Those who accepted the official Israeli position on the donations said the authority’s refusal to accept vaccines dampened claims that Israel was responsible for the slow vaccination rate among Palestinians. But those who believed the Palestinian position said that Israel acted in bad faith by making an offer to the authority that it had no choice but to reject.
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