In outbreak, Jerusalem tensions simmer
JERUSALEM — The arrival of the coronavirus has not eased tensions between Israelis and Palestinians in the eastern neighborhoods of Jerusalem, where each side of the conflict accuses the other of using the pandemic to advance political purposes.
Some Palestinians complain that Israeli officials, who provide health and police services in east Jerusalem, have been slow to offer virus testing and Arabic-language information in that part of the city and, in some cases, have thwarted the Arabs’ own efforts to respond to the outbreak.
Israeli officials, in turn, contend the Palestinian Authority, which governs the adjacent West Bank, is exploiting the outbreak to meddle in Jerusalem’s Arab neighborhoods.
The acrimony belies corona-cooperation in other areas, where Israeli and Palestinian agencies have worked together to distribute testing kits and control movement of people in the West Bank and facilitated the passage of critical supplies into Gaza.
But tensions in Jerusalem threaten to mar what both Israel and the Palestinian Authority increasingly see as successful efforts to prevent the high death counts suffered by some countries.
Beleaguered residents of east Jerusalem neighborhoods say they are caught in the war of words between the two sides, and not for the first time.
“Everybody wants to control us but nobody wants to help us,” said a young Palestinian man sitting on a car hood in the impoverished ridge-top neighborhood of Jabal Mukaber on a recent afternoon. He would give only his first name, Abdel, because he feared reprisals from both governments. “We fall in the middle.”
The most recent flare-up of tensions began early in the outbreak when Israeli and Palestinian activists criticized the Israeli Health Ministry for failing to provide covid-19 information in Arabic, the first language of Palestinians who make up about 20% of Israel’s population.
The ministry increased its Arabic updates soon after a legal advocacy group documented the lack of timely Arabic updates on its website in early March and has since instituted dedicated Arabic briefings on social media and television.
There is little indication that east Jerusalem is harboring a significant outbreak. The Health Ministry’s official map of coronavirus cases showed only two incidents of infection last week in the city’s Arab sections. But health experts warn the low count could reflect a lack of testing.
Israel has established a number of drive-thru testing centers around the country, including one in west Jerusalem. While Palestinian residents are free to travel about the city, many are reluctant to venture into Jewish sections, and leaders called for a center to be added in east Jerusalem.
“I ask the residents of east Jerusalem to be patient, be understanding,” Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Lion told media outlets in early April, announcing that the Health Ministry was looking for a testing site in their part of the city.
A center opened near a United Nations compound in Jabal Mukaber on April 3. But two other Palestinian neighborhoods, on the West Bank side of the concrete security barrier that winds through Jerusalem, remain cut off, leaving some 150,000 Jerusalem residents without practical access to testing.
“There are many elderly people, women and children who need to pass through a checkpoint to reach Jerusalem and the existing test center,” said Suhad Bishara, an attorney with Adalah, the legal center for Arab minority rights in Israel, which last week petitioned Israel’s Supreme Court to make testing available to those city residents.
Israeli officials said they were committed to delivering coronavirus services equitably to all parts of Jerusalem. Any lag in the Arab parts of the city, they contend, was only due to the frantic pace of mounting an unprecedented emergency response.
“Israel looks at the entire area as one epidemiological territory,” said Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan. “The virus does not distinguish between Jews and others.”
Jerusalem’s deputy mayor, Fleur Hassan-Nahoum, said coronavirus projects were now operating in all quarters of the city, including Arab neighborhoods, delivering food and essential items to those in need. She said the city, together with the Health Ministry and the army, have set up five quarantine hotels, including one in Jabal Mukaber.