Israel’s attack on Palestinian health facilities demonstrates that ethnic cleansing comes first
As I wrote
at the end of March, Israel’s contribution to preventing the spread of COVID-19
in the Occupied Territories was limited to demolishing a Quarantine Tent that
Palestinians had set up in the Jordan Valley. Even at a time of national
emergency, ethnic cleansing and house demolition must take priority. The tent
didn’t have a permit and as we know Palestinians don’t receive permits.
Below I have summarised
information from a number of different reports and articles. Some information
may be duplicated or at variance with each other.
No Communication about COVID-19 in
Arabic
Up until the middle of March
the official website, Facebook page, and messenger group of Israel’s Health Ministry barely contained a single word in Arabic on
the outbreak of the novel coronavirus across the country. MK Sami Abu Shehadeh
(Joint List) sent a letter to Health Minister Yaakov Litzman on March 8,
demanding that all information on the outbreak be made readily available to
Israel’s Arab citizens.
Abu Shehadeh said that Arab
leaders worked with Adalah, a Haifa-based legal center that focuses on the
rights of Palestinian citizens, to send letters to all the ministries and began
the process of petitioning the High Court of Justice.
Aiah Haj Odeh from Adalah
said she was surprised that it took only two days for every single ministry to
respond to her urgent letters. “The
websites of the ministries had no option for Arabic — only French or English,”
she said. “I wondered how many French
speakers there are in Israel while Arabic is the mother-tongue of 21 percent of
the population.’
Odeh attributes the speed of
the response to the government’s fear of legal action.
“This epidemic does not differentiate between an Arab and Jew, everyone
can get sick. Failure to provide the information will cost [the ministries]
dearly in human life. ”
[Israel
didn’t publish coronavirus guidance in Arabic — so Palestinians stepped in] +972 Magazine, March 17, 2020
When Israel first began to take measures to protect
its own population from COVID-19 it ‘forgot’ to translate its health warnings
into Arabic. Because its own people, being a Jewish state are Jewish. And why
should it? The Jewish Nation State Law
removed the obligation to inform Arabs as Arabic is no longer an official
language.
Ever since the early days of this
crisis, many officials, from the prime minister himself to the mostly lowly
bureaucrat, have avoided addressing the Arab community in Israel directly.
Little was published in Arabic. At the same time, the majority of
coronavirus tests were given to the Jewish public. This led to uproar, among
the Arab population. After all, most Arab citizens wanted to protect themselves
from the virus. The problem was that they were never told how. It was as if
they simply didn’t exist.
It
was only when it dawned on the Zionist functionaries that Coronavirus has no
nationality and respects no religion and if Israel’s Palestinian population
became infected so too would Israelis that the protection of Israel’s Arab
population began to be taken seriously.
 |
| Umm al Fahm |
Out of
almost 9,000 cases in Israel on April 7 just 200 were in predominantly Arab
localities. Yet Arabs constitute 20% of Israel’s total population. This wasn’t
because of some natural immunity that Arabs possess but because there had been
virtually no testing in Arab areas. Knesset member Yousef Jabareen (Joint List)
said that
“It is
incredible that as Knesset members, we had to pressure the Health Ministry to
get what any Jewish citizen can take for granted in Israel.”
According to Jabareen, it took
enormous effort and pressure by Joint List leaders and the heads of Arab local
authorities to set up two drive-thru testing facilities, at Wadi Ara, in the north,
and in Arara, in the south. The two stations helped increase the number of
tests performed in Arab communities to around 10,000.
Magen David Adom, Israel’s national emergency service, doesn’t even have an
Arabic-language copy of the questionnaire at their call centre with which to
conduct coronavirus testing. Finding solutions to such problems has been driven
by local organizing. Dr. Zahi Said, a Health Ministry spokesman to the Arab
population, said
‘That is why
we launched an intense information campaign in traditional and social media,
and we added Arabic-speaking staff to the Magen David Adom call center. The
biggest change, however, came from the health insurance providers. This was the
result of a decision to provide family physicians with the option of deciding
on their own whether a coronavirus test was necessary and to provide these
tests at their clinics, instead of referring patients to Magen David Adom.’
The High
Follow-Up Committee for Arab Citizens of Israel, the heads of Arab local
authorities, and Knesset members from the Joint List moved to create emergency
teams and a control centre of sorts to work in conjunction with neighborhood
committees.
The most deprived area of all is in
the Negev/Naqab where most unrecognised Arab villages are. Half all Israel’s
Arab villages are unrecognised which means that public services are not
provided to these villages as their residents have no legal right to live
there. In essence their citizenship is meaningless.
Adham Amarna, a resident of the
Bedouin village of Segev Shalom, described
how
‘The state ignores us entirely. While Netanyahu and
the Ministries of Health, Internal Security and Defense approached the effort to
stop the spread of the virus in Jewish localities as if preparing for war, they have abandoned Arab towns and
villages.’
Despite there not being enough tests for the Arab population the rate of infection
in the Arab community is believed to be lower than among Israeli Jews. By April
7, not one of the 65 people who died were Arab. Reasons include the Purim
celebrations in Israel.
The level of compliance in Arab society with Health Ministry instructions
is high. As of April 8, there were about 250 cases of coronavirus among the
Arab population, after some 10,000 tests were given [about 2.5%]. Furthermore,
there are no cases in living facilities for the elderly in the Arab public.
This contrasts sharply with the situation in the Jewish public.”
Compliance with the Health Ministry’s directives is especially visible in
the various houses of worship in the Arab public. Mosques, churches, and khalwats (Druze houses of worship)
stand empty. Nevertheless, there are still fears of a very high incidence of
the virus in Israeli Arab society. The reason for this is the lifestyle and
high population density in Arab towns and villages. The culture and lifestyle
of the Arab community often revolves around social gatherings, with people
meeting for coffee or to smoke a hookah.
In Jewish Orthodox areas such as the city of Bnei Brak there has been a
widespread ignoring of preventative measures resulting in a high incidence of
the virus. This has resulted in the
army moving in to enforce restrictions.
One-fifth
of all doctors in Israel are Arab and one-quarter of all nurses are Arabs,
and half of all pharmacists live in Arab localities, not to mention a
significant percentage of hospital administrators. But when they come home they
can transmit the virus to others. According to Jabareen, there has been an
increase in the number of nurses infected with the coronavirus, apparently at
their workplaces — hospitals. [Israeli
Arabs left to rely on 'self-help' for coronavirus testing and In
Israel, Arabs feel sidelined in struggle against coronavirus
 |
| A Palestinian man walks in al-Fari'ah refugee camp |
Under
Occupation things are Still Worse
In the West Bank and Jerusalem, the
Occupation and Military repression continue unabated by the pandemic. Coronavirus
provides the authorities with an additional pretext. Israel refuses to
recognise its responsibility as the Occupying Power under the Fourth
Geneva Convention on the basis that there is no occupation since god gave
the land to the Zionists. Aftr all they can’t occupy their own property! The
fact that the army is stationed all over the West Bank, that the settlers are
armed and the normal house demolitions, searches, curfews etc. continue is
irrelevant in this make believe world.
At nearly 18% officially, and probably higher, the prevalence of diabetes
among Palestinian refugees in the West Bank is one of the highest in the world.
The official rate in Gaza is 16%. Among adult citizens of Israel, it’s 7.2%.
The disease suppresses the immune system, among other complications, and can
spiral dangerously out of control when combined with an infection, such as Covid-19.
Diabetic patients with Covid-19 in China had a 1 in 14 chance of dying, more
than triple that of the general population.
Israeli occupying forces have confiscated building materials for a Palestinian field
clinic, shut down a Covid-19 testing facility in East Jerusalem,
and intensified the military securitisation of the West Bank,
including the complete blockading of Bethlehem following a Covid-19 outbreak in
early March.
Palestinians in camps have therefore
resorted to community-based responses to protect themselves. Popular Committees
and local organisations have taken the lead
[see Underlying
Conditions, Bram Wispelwey and Amaya Al-Orzza, LRB
April 18 2020]
Community is politically
marginalised but makes up one-fifth of doctors and a quarter of nurses
 |
| Dr Jameel Mohsen, head of infectious diseases at the Hillel Yeffe Medical Center, is one of many Israeli Arabs leading the fight against coronavirus |
Zahi Said was driving to the medical clinic he
runs in Haifa when his phone rang —Netanyahu wanted to see him. He had just
watched him on television discussing how the government needed to reach out to
Arab Israelis and wanted some advice.
Mr
Said, who advises one of Israel’s largest healthcare providers on Arab issues,
turned his car round and drove straight to Netanyahu’s official residence. When
he was asked if the Arab community in Israel could expect to receive equal
access to coronavirus care as the Jewish majority, Mr Said gave a diplomatic
answer.
“We know it’s not a secret
that the resources in this country are not equally distributed, but I have to
look at the glass as half-full,”
he
told
the Financial Times.”
Netanyahu
has denigrated Arab politicians as supporters of terrorism, stripped Arabic of
its status as an official language and passed a law that gave Jews alone the
right to self-determination in the state of Israel. Now, in the battle against
Covid-19, he needs their help.
Some
of the nation’s largest hospitals have Arab doctors heading major departments,
and the country’s leading virologist is Arab.
 |
Ultraorthodox Jews wearing masks watch as funeral workers prepare the body of former Sephardic chief rabbi of Israel Eliahu Bakshi-Doron © Ahmad Gharabli/AFP/Getty
|
Arabs
are disproportionately represented in the medical community because attaining
professional qualifications has been one way to push back against political
marginalisation. Indeed they behave much as Jews in the Diaspora did faced with
oppression. Their capital is in their skills. It was not for nothing that Auschwitz
survivor, Primo Levi said that ‘Today the Palestinians are the Jews of the
Israelis.’
“The Polish [Jewish] mother used to
want her son to be a doctor, but now she wants him to get a tech job,” Mr Said
joked. “The Arab mother still wants her
children to be in medicine.”
Jameel Mohsen, the head of
infectious diseases at the Hillel Yeffe Medical Center, was more critical. “As an Arab, other jobs are closed off to
us, so we became doctors,” he said.
Israel has a way of celebrating good Arab doctors,
while discriminating against all other Arabs Osama Tanous, a 34-year-old Arab
paediatrician
Despite
claims from Netanyahu and his political allies that Arabs were ignoring health
directives, none of the Arab majority cities, even the densely populated
neighbourhoods of East Jerusalem, have had major outbreaks.
But
for Osama Tanous, a 34-year-old paediatrician who cites the Indian leftist
Arundhati Roy as an inspiration, the sudden elevation of Arab doctors to
national saviours will not usher in new equality for Arab communities.
“Israel has a way of celebrating good Arab
doctors, while discriminating against all other Arabs, so that doctors become
the ambassadors of this beautiful Israeli system of coexistence,” he said,
referring to a flurry of recent articles in Israeli newspapers praising Arab
medics.
“It makes it appear that now
that you have Arab doctors saving Jewish lives, and helping Israel at a time of
national crisis, therefore it is time to stop being racist against them — this
is a very slippery and dangerous notion.”
It
is the equivalent of philo-Semitism that Jews experienced, the other side of
the anti-Semitic coin.
For Mr Tanous, interactions
between Arabs and Israelis are always political. “It’s just another level of us having to prove ourselves,”
“Prove that we can get into medical school,
prove that we can be a part of this national effort to fight the epidemic, just
so that we can be granted equality by our occupiers.
The work of Arab medics so
far has certainly not brought their communities any immediate benefits, said
Hani Daoud, the head of a pharmacist’s association that represents almost 300
pharmacies in Israel’s predominantly Arab north. His colleagues were the first
defenders against the virus as people rushed to pharmacies to stock up on
medicine, masks and hand sanitiser.
 |
| Naftali Bennett, far-Right Israeli Minister in mask |
COVID-19 in
Israeli prisons and detention facilities
At the end of January 2020, 183
Palestinian children were detained in Israeli prisons, according to the Israel
Prison Service.
While international law demands
that children only be detained as a measure of last resort, pre-trial detention
is the norm for Palestinian children detained by Israeli forces in the occupied
West Bank.
Four Palestinian prisoners detained
at Israel’s Megiddo prison, located inside Israel northwest of the occupied
West Bank city of Jenin, were placed in isolation after they were in contact
with a COVID-19 positive Israeli officer, according to Ha’aretz.
Megiddo prison is one of several
detention facilities located inside Israel where Palestinian child “security
prisoners” are held.
One Palestinian adult detainee in
Ofer prison, located in the occupied West Bank between Jerusalem and Ramallah, tested
positive for coronavirus in the adult section closest to the juvenile block
where over 50 Palestinian child detainees are held.
While staff reportedly clean and
disinfect the shared prison yard on a daily basis, prison cells and rooms are
not being disinfected. Detainees at Ofer prison, including child detainees, are
not provided with hygiene products.
As of April 13, 11,235 people in
Israel had tested positive for the COVID-19 and 110 had died according to Ha’aretz.
In the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip there were 272 confirmed cases of persons infected with
COVID-19. The PA declared a state of emergency across the Palestinian
Territories on March 5 and on April 3, it was extended for an additional 30-days.
According
to Ha’aretz of 31 March the director general of Magen David Adom announced
that there will be no more testing for the coronavirus in the Arab community if
the criteria aren’t changed.
At that time not a single
drive-through station for coronavirus tests has been set up in Arab
communities. The original plan for the drive-through points included seven
Jewish communities, and not a single Arab one. Therefore, information about the
drive-through plan was published only in Hebrew. Due to the distance and information
delay, only a small number of Arabs asked to be tested in the Jewish
communities. The paucity of requests led to a decision not to establish
drive-through points in Arab communities. Only after the intervention of Arab
members of Knesset was a promise made to set them up.
Clalit Medical Services, to which
more than half of the Arabs who are insured belong, prepared only one clinic,
compared to 45 in Jewish communities. After the first coronavirus patient was
discovered, in February, an emergency team was set up to plan the national
emergency program, including steps for diagnosing and treating patients whose
condition worsens. It didn’t include one Arab.
 |
| Hamas security at Rafah |
On April 12, Haaretz reported about new negotiations between Israel and
Hamas concerning steps toward prisoners’ exchanges. The Palestinians implied
that part of the deal is that Israel will supply to the Gaza strip an
unspecified number of ventilators to treat corona patients. What is significant
is that, according to the same report, Israeli sources denied (out of all the
reported details about the planned deal) that ventilators would be allowed into
Gaza!
The Mossad soon boasted of
bringing in 100,000 virus tests from an unspecified source, only to be rebuked
by a Ministry of Health official who commented that these were not the tests
that were needed. After the remark was published the official hurried to
apologize, and the Mossad promised to check again what is needed and continue
the hunt.
It is not surprising that the Mossad,
[Israel’s MI6] which specializes in assassinations, espionage and all sorts of
under-cover activities, will resort to illegal means in its new role. Israel is
used to being above international law for all its war crimes, so why should it
fear stealing medical equipment from around the world?
It is also indicative of the nature
of the Israeli state that Mossad is playing any role. It’s like having MI6 take
over the provision of PPE!
On the receiving end of Shabak
In Israel itself Shin Bet was assigned the task of
identifying the routes of people infected by the Corona virus and instructing
those who were in their proximity to be in self-isolation. For the first time
it became public knowledge that Shabak can follow (now it is officially doing
so) the whereabouts of each person, at least as long as people are moving
around with their smartphones.
For the Palestinians, both in the West Bank and inside
the green line, constant inspection by Shabak is nothing new. Even in Haifa, one
of the few mixed cities under Israeli Apartheid, any Palestinian youth may be
invited to a “conversation” with Shabak officers for no reason at all. For
political activists the military governor (yes, there are military governors on
both sides of the green line) may issue an administrative detention order,
based on Shabak secret “evidence”
As soon as Shabak started to target Jewish Israelis,
admittedly not sending them to prison, only to self-isolation, suddenly the
press was full of reports
about its errors.
One woman arranged for her husband to be in self
isolation in their home after he came from abroad, and stayed with her parents
so she could continue to work. But after she passed in the street near her
house to wave hello to her husband, who stayed on the balcony at a safe
distance, she was sent to self-isolate also. Another women prepared a cake for
a neighbor under isolation and left it for him near a closed door. She also
fell in the Shabak net.
 |
| Palestinian woman being tested |
People whose lives were suddenly disrupted for no reason
called the Ministry of Health and were answered that they don’t know a thing
about it, it is Shabak’s work. They were told that “Shabak never makes mistakes”. Some tried to call the Shabak
directly and found that there is no way to reach the secretive organization and
no way to appeal its decrees.
One case that was reported in detail
is that of a medical doctor who was tested for corona. The test returned
negative but apparently the result that was typed into the system was wrong.
Soon his relatives, neighbors and medics that worked with him were ordered by
SMS to isolate themselves. Only after the media exposed the absurdity of the
situation did the MOH admitted the error.
For Israel’s regular police force the declaration of
country-wide lockdown was another opportunity to abuse Palestinians.
According to the Jerusalem
Post of 4 April settler and Jewish extremist violence against West
Bank Palestinians spiked by 78% between March 17 and 30 compared to the
rest of the year, the United Nations has reported.
There was a severe attack on Palestinians in Jaffa, which
was annexed by Tel Aviv, and is now under intense pressure for
“Judaization/Gentrification”, between April 1 and 2.
As the lockdown was declared the Tel Aviv police found
an opportunity to make a show of force in Jaffa in a way that wasn’t practiced
in any other neighborhood. It provoked two days of widespread clashes that
continued late into the night.
On the first day, in what was supposed to be
enforcement of the lockdown, police started arresting local youth. What
provoked the residents most was the fact that the police themselves didn’t show
any intention of following the anti-infection instructions. They moved in dense
groups, without masks, and beat people with their bare hands. A woman who tried
to protect her son was thrown to the ground, her head hit the pavement and she
started bleeding. People all over the neighborhood erupted in anger, not ready
to take it anymore.
On the second evening activists initiated a vigil
against police violence, trying to keep the social distancing standards. Even
though the lockdown order specifically allows demonstrations, the police
demanded that the protesters to disperse and soon attacked them.
[See Apartheid
in the time of corona, Mondoweiss, Yoav
Haifawi April 13, 2020]
See also If
the Coronavirus Devastates Gaza, Israel Will Be to Blame, Jonathan Cook
A few notes from a Zoom
meeting held by Palestine Solidarity Campaign on the situation in
Jerusalem.
2 weeks after the Coronavirus situation there were no precautions
taken in East Jerusalem by the authorities - no quarantine, no tests and no
cleaning. In response to this the Jerusalem Alliance of different Palestinian civil
society organisations was formed to do what the occupying power should have
been doing. The Palestinians of Jerusalem are in a legal no mans land. They are
legal residents of the city, not Israeli citizens. This status can be and has
been withdrawn forcing people into exile or to living in the West Bank.
Jerusalem is very dense – the number infected could be
very high. Palestinians themselves set up quarantine in hotel. The Health Ministry
said it was best in Israel.
Palestinian shops are not allowed to open but Israeli
shops are being allowed to. Palestinian workers are not allowed to return to
the West Bank. The employer is supposed to provide facilities instead. The WHO
and UN did not help. There is no PPE for children. Israel recognizes no
responsibility
It would also seem that the Israeli authorities are
taking advantage of the situation to pursue its project of ethnic cleansing. A
Palestinian who had been in the United States for only 1 month was deported on
the same plane that he arriving in. 4 Palestinians coming from Russia and 2
from the Golan Heights were prevented from boarding a plane in Russia despite having
ID cards and documentation. They were told that they didn’t have a permit.
Palestinians are not sure yet whether this heralds a new policy or was simply a
mistake.
Tony Greenstein
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