Coronavirus response stirs Jerusalem sovereignty struggle
AFP 18/04/2020
Israel’s arrest of senior Palestinian officials for “illegal” efforts to contain coronavirus and the Jewish state’s closure of a clinic have exacerbated a long-running row over the status of east Jerusalem. Since the onset of the health crisis, Palestinian officials allege the Arab population of Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem has been overlooked by Israeli efforts to curb the spread of the virus. Israeli police recently shuttered a COVID-19 screening facility in the east Jerusalem neighbourhood of Silwan — the testing was unauthorised, they said, because it was only overseen by the Palestinian Authority, and not Israel. “Our goal is to provide aid to the people of east Jerusalem who are intentionally being neglected” by Israel, Fadi al-Hadami, the Palestinian government’s minister for Jerusalem affairs, told AFP. But meetings with “hospital doctors in Jerusalem, interviews with media calling on people to stay at home to fight corona(virus) — they (Israel) consider these things violations,” he lamented. Earlier this month, Hadami and Adnan Ghaith, the Palestinians’ governor of Jerusalem, were detained by Israeli authorities amid their on-the-ground response to the coronavirus crisis. Both men were released within 24 hours. But the spread of COVID-19 in predominantly Palestinian east Jerusalem risks exacerbating political tensions that could put lives at risk.
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