Israel discriminates against Palestinians by not providing COVID-19 info in Arabic
Homepage of Magen David Adom’s website indicating it is available only in Hebrew and English, October 2020
Yumna Patel reports in Mondoweiss:
As countries around the world continue to vaccinate their populations against COVID-19, the coronavirus continues to rage in Palestine, where the prospect of getting vaccinated still remains a mere fantasy for many.
Palestinian officials continue to enforce partial lockdowns across the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, where hundreds of new cases of the virus are reported every single day. Since the pandemic began, health officials in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt) have recorded over 167,000 cases of the virus, and 1,784 deaths.
Of the total recorded cases, the number of active cases in the oPt stands just under 17,000. In the past 24 hours, health officials recorded close to 800 new cases of the virus and 16 deaths.
While the Palestinian Ministry of Health (MOH) announced on Monday that they had approved the Russian COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use in the oPt, it could still be weeks before the people start to get vaccinated, and the government has yet to make public its detailed plan for rolling out the vaccine.
Meanwhile in Israel, the country has become one of the first in the world to vaccinate 20% of its population, administering thousands of doses of the vaccine each day. Despite having, in the eyes of the rest of the world, one of the most successful vaccine roll outs, Israel has been accused by rights groups of leaving behind, or more so leaving out, a huge sector of their populations: Palestinians.
Rights groups have criticized Israeli health officials and emergency services of discriminating against Palestinian communities in Israel by failing to provide accurate information regarding COVID-19 and the vaccine in Arabic.
This week, Adalah — The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel filed a petition to the Israeli High Court of Justice demanding that the country’s primary emergency medical and ambulance service, Magen David Adom (MDA) provide urgent, essential COVID-19-related public health information in Arabic.
Currently, the MDA website provides information regarding coronavirus-related services only in Hebrew and English, something that Adalah says has marginalized the country’s Palestinian population, who makeup 20% of the Israeli citizenry.
Adalah argues that as a government body, MDA is legally obliged to make public health information accessible “to all residents of the country in an equal manner.”