The Palestinian Authority Health Ministry says it will seek to renegotiate the terms of a recent deal between the PA, Pfizer and the Israeli Health Ministry which would have seen over one million doses of Pfizer vaccines transferred from Israel to the PA.
Israel announced the planned transfer on Friday and sent an initial shipment of 100,000 Pfizer vaccines to Ramallah. Under the terms of the deal, Israel would swap its own soon-to-expire vaccines for the PA’s own shipment of fresh Pfizer vaccines, which were scheduled to arrive later in 2021.
Ramallah has been slow to roll out its coronavirus vaccine response, and less than one-fifth of West Bank Palestinians are vaccinated. But the PA canceled the deal on Friday night, claiming that the vaccines did not meet their safety standards as they were too close to expiring.
A Palestinian member of a health ministry mobile unit vaccinates an elderly Palestinian against the COVID-19 coronavirus, in the village of Dura near Hebron in the West Bank, on June 9, 2021. (Photo by HAZEM BADER / AFP)
Israel says that the vaccines are “identical in every way to the vaccines currently being given to citizens of Israel.”
In a statement, the PA Health Ministry announces that it will return 90,000 vaccine doses to Israel, saying that they are set to expire on June 30. A spokesperson for the PA Health Ministry did not respond to a request for comment as to what would be done with the remaining 10,000 vaccines.
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