By Aditi Pangam
Israel has made global headlines as their ambitious national vaccination campaign put them in first place in the international race of vaccination and immunisation against Covid-19. Israel began their intensive campaign in late December, just as they entered their third nation-wide lockdown. In hopes of it being their last, Prime Minister Netanyahu is betting on the vaccine-oriented strategy that would allow the nation to be done with the virus by March. As Netanyahu said, “As soon as we are done with this stage, within 30 days we can emerge from the coronavirus, open the economy and do things that no country can do,". The program has so far proved to be effective and has worked impressively well; Israel now has the highest proportion of citizens vaccinated against Covid-19 in the world. Thus far they have given 74 doses for every 100 people and on a whole, Israel has inoculated more than 4.6 million people - 50.4% of their population. Moreover, the number of cases, hospitalisations and deaths have fallen 21 days following the vaccination campaign. As things are on the up and up for Israel, they are left not only in quite a comfortable position but are also left with a surplus in vaccines. This is where the debate begins.
Whilst Israel may be the first in the global race, Palestine is concerningly far behind. This is because Palestinian authorities in the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip cannot independently fund vaccines and distribution, thus relying on global aid, particularly multilateral co-operation programs such as COVAX. Since much of Palestine is under Israel military occupation, Israel is expected to uphold their international duty of responsible sovereignty. According to international humanitarian law and as per Article 56 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, Israel is obligated to “the duty of ensuring and maintaining the medical and hospital establishments and services, public health and hygiene in the occupied territory, with particular reference to the adoption and application of the prophylactic and preventive measures necessary to combat the spread of contagious diseases and epidemics.”
But instead of fulfilling this expectation, Netenyahu wants to use the excess surplus as diplomatic leverage, offering the extra vaccine doses to Israel’s allies. He plans to distribute doses to 15 countries, including Italy, Chad, Honduras, and Hungary - essentially, countries which have either renewed their diplomatic relations with Israel or have plans to move embassies to Jerusalem. Netenyahu exemplifies how nations have come to politicise the pandemic, demonstrating how vaccines have come to act as a kind of diplomatic currency, with countries using the distribution of vaccine stock for political gain. This extent of politicisation was seen by global superpowers China and Russia as well, with their respective SinoVac and Sputnik vaccines being used to form new diplomatic relations and widen global influence.
Whilst Netenyahu most likely would’ve followed the same route in using the vaccines as political leverage, extensive pressure from the US, Israel’s biggest ally, led Netenyahu to temporarily suspend the vaccine distribution program and additionally, sign off on the delivery of thousands of vaccines to Palestinians.
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