Palestinian Muslim worshipers perform the Friday prayer inside the al-Aqsa mosque, in Jerusalem’s Old City on July 10, 2020. (Photo: Muhammed Qarout Idkaidek/APA Images)
It’s been five months since the first cases of the coronavirus were announced in the occupied Palestinian territories, and Palestinians are still struggling to fight the spread of the virus.
What began as a relatively slow burn, with no more than a few hundred cases within the first three months, quickly devolved into a rapidly growing crisis with the total number of cases in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza surpassing 23,000 cases.
Despite reports from the Ministry of Health that 60% of the total cases are in recovery, the number of new cases being reported every day are still in the hundreds.
In the past 24 hours alone, there were more than 612 new cases, a third of which were reported in occupied East Jerusalem, which has seen a surge in cases recently.
Since the beginning of the pandemic Palestinians in East Jerusalem, who live under the jurisdiction of Israel’s Jerusalem Municipality, have reported major disparities in how Israeli authorities have handled containment efforts in their communities, versus Jewish Israeli communities in West Jerusalem.
In the early stages of the outbreak, rights groups reported a severe lack of testing centers and containment efforts on part of Israeli authorities in East Jerusalem’s neighborhoods.
In the meantime, locals accused Israeli authorities of actively hindering their efforts to fight the virus in the form of the harassment and arrest of local volunteer health workers, continued over-policing of Palestinian neighborhoods, and a disproportionate amount of fines for health code violations (i.e. not wearing a mask) compared to Jewish communities in the city.
On Monday Israeli force shot and killed a Palestinian man after they accused him of allegedly trying to attack soldiers in the Old City of Jerusalem, though local Palestinian media reported that the man was shot after an “altercation” with police.
Israeli Police spokesperson Micky Rosenfeld said forces “neutralized” a Palestinian “terrorist” after he stabbed and “lightly injured” an officer in the Old City, near the Bab Hutta area, just outside the Al Aqsa Mosque compound.
Al Jazeera cited the Palestinian Red Crescent Society as saying that its teams were prevented by Israeli forces from entering the scene to treat the man before he succumbed to his wounds.
Photos of the man, still wearing a blue mask on his face, lying on the ground with blood streaming from his body went viral on social media, as Palestinians lamented the fact that the man was wearing a mask to protect himself from COVID-19, but could not avoid the violence of Israeli forces.
Just hours earlier, another Palestinian man, who local media reported to be deaf, was shot at a checkpoint in the occupied West Bank after he failed to adhere to orders from Israeli soldiers to stop, which he allegedly could not hear.
