Sir, – Jackie Goodall (Letters, February 13th) suggests that the Israeli state's record-breaking vaccination rollout is being "subsequently used to further a political agenda".
On the contrary; I welcome any news of success in the global struggle against Covid-19, but a sense of fairness compels me, and many others, to protest the media’s frequent sanitisation of the Israeli state’s discriminatory policies towards the Palestinians, which well-regarded Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem has recently characterised as apartheid.
Ms Goodall accuses Patrick Costello TD of quoting “selectively” from Article 56 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, but by relying on a quotation from an unnamed Palestinian Authority official last December, Ms Goodall is doing some selective quoting of her own.
Those who have followed this matter will know that in early January, both the Palestinian Authority and World Health Organisation (WHO) made informal requests for 10,000 doses vaccine for Palestinian medical workers, which the Israeli ministry for health refused. At this point the WHO reported that 8,000 Palestinian medical workers had already contracted Covid-19.
:fill(white):background_color(white)/static.themebuilder.aws.arc.pub/irishtimes/1647534191476.png)
I welcome the news that the Israeli state has made an initial 5,000 vaccine doses available for Palestinian medical workers, and that Palestinians who hold Israeli work permits are set to receive vaccinations soon. Media scrutiny in this newspaper and others cannot be discounted as a factor in the former decision, while national self-interest must be acknowledged as a likely factor in the latter. But, as agreed by Tánaiste Leo Varadkar last week, much more is obligated under the Geneva Convention.
Patrick Costello TD and other contributors to your newspaper are to be commended for counterbalancing ubiquitous references to the Israeli state’s record-breaking vaccination rollout, with an examination of the tremendous obstacles that Palestinians in the West Bank, and particularly in the blockaded Gaza Strip, face in inoculating even their frontline medical staff. – Yours, etc,
BETTY PURCELL,
Dublin 6W.