Coronavirus oblivious to Israeli, Palestinian borders
The necessity of cooperating against the novel coronavirus should encourage Israeli and Palestinian authorities to also work together on day-to-day issues, such as water and air pollution.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Feb. 2 declaration that he had “instructed” the Israel Biological Institute to develop a vaccine against the novel coronavirus and to establish a production line in Israel does not appear to have made much of an impression on the virus. It continues to infect people around the globe — with 50 cases diagnosed in Israel so far — and no end in sight.
The lead stories on the news focus on border closings and airline groundings. Along with worrying reports about the spread of the disease, however, there is some encouraging news. Talk of Israel annexing Palestinian-populated areas of the West Bank has made way for discussion about the importance of Israel cooperating with its Palestinian neighbors. One miniscule virus has illustrated to Israelis the limits of their country’s power. The organism hops over walls and fences and mocks the Iron Dome anti-missile defense system. It threatens the Palestinians stopped at barriers as they try to enter Israel to work and scares the Israeli soldiers searching them for weapons.
“There are no borders here,” Brig. Gen. Ghassan Alian, the military’s point man for civilian Palestinian affairs, told Kan Radio on March 8. “There is no ‘them’ and ‘us.’… People in Judea and Samaria [the West Bank] live together.” Alian's colleague Dalia Basa, the civil administration’s health coordinator, was quoted as saying: “Bacteria and viruses do not stop at the border, and the spread of the dangerous virus in Judea and Samaria can also jeopardize the health of the residents of Israel.”
Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories has been working over the past two weeks to assist the Palestinian Authority (PA) in preventing a coronavirus outbreak in the West Bank and Gaza. As part of the initiative, Israel gave the PA 250 coronavirus test kits. Joint training sessions for Israeli and Palestinian medical personnel were organized to educate them about the virus, protection for health care workers and testing of suspected carriers.
