HRW Calls on ‘Israeli’ Regime to Vaccinate All Palestinians Against COVID-19

By Staff, Agencies

Human Rights Watch [HRW] urged the Zionist occupation regime to provide more than 4.5 million Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and the besieged Gaza Strip with COVID-19 vaccines against the backdrop of reports that the Tel Aviv regime was deliberately letting the spread of the disease in the ‘Israeli’-occupied territories.

In a statement on Sunday, the US-based rights group said the Zionist regime must carry out its obligations, as the “occupying power,” under the Fourth Geneva Convention to ensure provision of medical supplies.

The need for the supply, it said, has gone up “after more than 50 years of occupation with no end in sight.”

“‘Israeli’ authorities should provide COVID-19 vaccines to the more than 4.5 million Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. While ‘Israel’ has already vaccinated more than 20 percent of its ‘citizens’, it has not committed to vaccinate Palestinians living in the same occupied territory under its military rule.”

It added that the said responsibility, as well as the Zionist entity’s obligations under international human rights, includes providing vaccines in a “non-discriminatory way” to those Palestinians living under the regime’s control, using as a benchmark what is provided for its own people.

The rights group particularly slammed the practice of giving shots to illegal ‘Israeli’ settlers in the West Bank, but not the Palestinian landowners.

“Nothing can justify today's reality in parts of the West Bank, where people on one side of the street are receiving vaccines, while those on the other do not, based on whether they're Jewish or Palestinian,” said HRW's Palestine director Omar Shakir in the statement.

He also stressed that everyone in the same territory should be given the COVID-19 vaccine, “regardless of their ethnicity.”