Aljazeera, maart 2020
As the number of infections and deaths from COVID-19 multiply by the
day, there have been increasing calls across the world for people to
show solidarity and care for each other. Yet for the Israeli government, there is no such thing as solidarity.
As soon as the first coronavirus infections
were detected, the Israeli authorities demonstrated that they have no
intention of easing apartheid to make sure Palestinians are able to face
the epidemic under more humane conditions.
Repression has continued, with the Israeli occupation forces using the excuse of increased police presence to continue raids on
some communities, such as the Issawiya neighborhood in East Jerusalem,
home demolitions in places like Kafr Qasim village and the destruction
of crops in Bedouin communities in the Naqab desert.
Despite four Palestinian prisoners testing positive for COVID-19, the
Israeli government has so far refused to heed calls to release the
5,000 Palestinians
(including 180 children) that it currently holds in its jails. And
there has been no sign that the debilitating siege on the Gaza Strip,
which has decimated its public services, would be lifted any time soon.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is also trying to exclude
the mostly Palestinian Joint List from the formation of an emergency
unity government to tackle the outbreak, calling its members “terror supporters“.
At the same time, the Israeli authorities have been quick to depict
Palestinians as carriers of the virus and a threat to public health.
In early March, when the Palestinian Ministry of Health announced it
had confirmed the first seven cases of the coronavirus (which causes
COVID-19 disease) in the occupied Palestinian territory, Israeli Defense
minister Naftali Bennett was quick to shut down the city of Bethlehem,
where all the cases were located.
Of course, the concern there was not the health and safety of
Palestinians in the city, but rather the threat of them infecting
Israelis. The nearby settlement of Efrat – which also had confirmed
infections, of course – was not put on lockdown at that time.
Shortly after, the health ministry issued a statement advising Israelis not to enter the occupied Palestinian territories.
Then last week, Netanyahu asked the “Arab-speaking public”
to follow the instruction of the ministry of health saying that there
is a compliance problem among the Palestinians. No such concerns were
expressed about of some members of the Jewish population of Israel, who
outright refused to shut down religious schools and businesses.
This attitude towards Palestinians is of course not new. The writings of
early European Zionist settlers are full of racist assumptions about
Arab hygiene and living conditions, and the threat of the disease coming
from the Palestinian population was an early justification for
apartheid.
Apart from the decades-old repression and discrimination, during the
COVID-19 epidemic, Palestinians will be facing another consequence of
occupation and apartheid – a broken healthcare system.
The roots of its dysfunction go back to the mandate era, when the British discouraged the
formation of a Palestinian-run healthcare sector. The Palestinian
population (mostly the urban parts of it) was serviced by a number of
hospitals that the British colonialists set up, as well as health
facilities established by various Western missionaries. Meanwhile, the
Jewish settlers were allowed to set up their own healthcare system,
funded generously from abroad and run independently of the mandate.
During World War II, some missionaries left and closed down their
clinics, and after 1948, the British withdrew, leaving behind an
ill-performing healthcare infrastructure. In 1949, Egypt annexed Gaza.
The following year, Jordan did the same with the West Bank. Over the
next 17 years, Cairo and Amman provided for the Palestinian population
living under their rule, but they did not really establish a
well-functioning healthcare system.
UNRWA – the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East –
had to step up its services, providing primary healthcare, while the
Palestinians started building a network of charitable healthcare
facilities.
After the war of 1967 and the Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip
and the West Bank, Israel as an occupying power was legally responsible
for healthcare of the Palestinians, but unsurprisingly, it did nothing
to encourage the development of a robust healthcare sector. To
illustrate the point: in 1975, the budget allocated for healthcare in
the West Bank was smaller than that of one Israeli hospital for the whole year.
In 1994, the Palestinian Authority was created and took over service
provision. Needless to say, the continuing occupation and the fact that
the Authority’s budget was dependent on foreign donors and the whims of
the Israeli government, as well as the corruption of PA officials, did
not allow the Palestinian health sector to improve.
As a result, if you were to enter a Palestinian hospital in the West
Bank today, you would be struck by the overcrowding of patients, the
shortages of supplies, the inadequate equipment and the substandard
infrastructure and sanitation. Medical professionals have repeatedly
protested the poor working conditions in their hospitals, most recently
in February this year, but to no avail.
With just 1.23 beds per 1,000 people, 2,550 working doctors, less
than 20 intensive care specialists and less than 120 ventilators in all
public hospitals, the occupied West Bank is facing a public health
disaster if the authorities do not contain the spread of COVID-19.
The situation in the West Bank may seem bleak, but the one in the
Gaza Strip is simply catastrophic. The United Nations announced that the
strip will be unlivable by 2020. It is now 2020 and the residents of
the Gaza Strip – apart from inhuman living conditions – are now also
facing a COVID-19 outbreak, as the first cases were confirmed on March 21.
The Israeli, Egyptian and PA-imposed blockade of Gaza has brought its
healthcare system to the brink of collapse. This has been compounded by
cycles of destruction of health facilities and a slow rebuilding
efforts following repeated large-scale military offensives by the
Israeli military.
The people of Gaza already face dire conditions: unemployment is at
44 percent (61 percent for the youth); 80 percent of the population is
dependent on some form of foreign assistance; 97 percent of water is
undrinkable; and 10 percent of children have stunted growth due to
malnutrition.
Healthcare provision is on a constant decline. According to the NGO
Medical Aid for Palestinians, since the year 2000 “there has been a drop
in the number of hospital beds (1.8 to 1.58), doctors (1.68 to 1.42)
and nurses (2.09 to 1.98) per 1,000 people, leading to overcrowding and
reduced quality of services”. Israel’s ban on the import of technology
with possible “dual use” has restricted the purchasing of equipment,
such as X-ray scanners and medical radioscopes.
Regular power cuts threaten the lives of thousands of patients
relying on medical apparatuses, including babies in incubators.
Hospitals lack about 40 percent of essential medicines, and there are
inadequate amounts of basic medical supplies, such as syringes and
gauze. The 2018 decision of the Trump administration to stop US funding
for UNRWA also affected the agency’s ability to provide healthcare and bring doctors to perform complex surgeries in Gaza.
The limits of the Gaza healthcare system were tested in 2018 during
the March of the Great Return, when Israeli soldiers opened mass fire on
unarmed Palestinians protesting near the fence separating the strip
from Israeli territory. In those days, hospitals were overwhelmed with
wounded and dead, and for months they were struggling to provide proper care for the thousands injured by live ammunition, many of whom were permanently disabled.
The Gaza Strip is one of the most densely populated areas in the
world, which also experiences severe problems with water and sanitation
infrastructure. It is clear that stopping COVID-19 from spreading will
be next to impossible. It is also clear that the population, which is
already worn down by malnutrition, a higher rate of disability (due to
all the Israeli assaults), and psychological distress due to war and
hardship will be that much more vulnerable to the virus. Many will die
and the healthcare system will likely collapse.
So as the West Bank and Gaza face potential health catastrophes amid
an impeding COVID-19 epidemic, the question is, what will Israel do?
Will it give access to its healthcare system to Palestinians? Will it at
least stop blocking foreign medical aid?
A recent video
that went viral on Palestinian social media can give us the answer. In
it, a Palestinian labourer is seen struggling to breathe by the side of a
road at an Israel checkpoint near Beit Sira village. His Israeli
employer had called the Israeli police on him after seeing him severely
sick and suspecting that he had the virus. He had been picked up and
dumped at the checkpoint.
Decades of settler colonial rule, military occupation, and repeated
deadly assaults have taught Palestinians not to expect any “solidarity”
from the Israeli apartheid government. In this, like in previous crises,
they will pull through with their proverbial sumud (perseverance).
The views expressed in this article are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect A
