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Israel provides COVID-19 vaccine doses for Palestinian health-care workers

Faced with international criticism, and also for its own interest of curbing the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, Israel transferred to the Palestinian Authority a first shipment of 2,000 Pfizer vaccine doses.
A health worker administers a dose of the Pfizer-BioNtech COVID-19 vaccine at Clalit Health Services, in a gymnasium in the Israeli city of Petah Tikva, on February 1, 2021. - Israel's nationwide lockdown was extended to contain the coronavirus which has continued to spread rapidly as the country presses ahead with an aggressive vaccination campaign. (Photo by JACK GUEZ / AFP) (Photo by JACK GUEZ/AFP via Getty Images)

Israel transferred today 2,000 coronavirus vaccine doses to the Palestinian Authority (PA). The Pfizer-made vaccine doses were delivered through the Betunia trade crossing point in the southwest of Ramallah in the West Bank. A second delivery of 3,000 doses is expected in the coming days, with both deliveries destined for Palestinian health-care workers. It was the first time Israel handed over to the Palestinians significant coronavirus vaccines from its own supply.

Last December, shortly before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched a mass vaccination drive, Palestinian senior officials said they did not approach Israel for help in obtaining vaccines. An unnamed official at the Palestinian Ministry of Health was quoted by the Jerusalem Post as saying, “We are working on our own to obtain the vaccine from a number of sources. We are not a department in the Israeli Defense Ministry. We have our own government and Ministry of Health, and they are making huge efforts to get the vaccine.”

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