Coronavirus and PA: Dual threat

Two February 2 headlines point to a dual threat: 1) The coronavirus: “PM convenes emergency meeting as fear of coronavirus spreads,” and

2) The PA: ”Abbas: We’ll cut ties with Israel.”

The corrupt, incompetent Palestinian Authority is the weakest link in the State of Israel’s health security chain.

Over 50,000 workers, legal and illegal, arrive in Israel every day from the Palestinian territories. If and when the devastating virus reaches these territories, the rudimentary health facilities there will be incapable of adequately identifying, treating and isolating those infected and those at risk. Once the virus is here among us all and spreading, it will be of little use for Palestinians to fall back on Israeli health facilities and services then already stretched to the limit.

While Israeli Arabs are naturally the closest in contact with the territories, the threat is equal to all residents of our common land; the air does not discriminate between Jew and Arab, between citizen and non-citizen.

Even though PM Benjamin Netanyahu declared on February 2 that Israel is working with the PA to ensure the implementation of necessary health measures, such declaration does not remotely touch the magnitude of the threat to all. We need a total, countrywide health emergency here in the wake of the World Health Organization’s international declaration.

The looming crisis requires expanded Israeli-Palestinian cooperation, not less, if for no other reason than that Abbas not be branded by his own people as also a murderer. Israel and the PA should quickly issue a special joint appeal for international health assistance now for the territories as a concern of all. (I am a Public Health School graduate among my other qualifications.)

AARON BRAUNSTEIN

Jerusalem