Earlier today, we complained to editors at The Times over an article by Anshel Pfeffer (“Covid vaccine diplomacy wins Israel some new friends”, Feb. 25) which included the following:
Human rights organisations have claimed that Israel is responsible for vaccinating the five million Palestinians living in these areas as Israel is considered the occupier under international law and therefore required by the Fourth Geneva Convention to take care of their health.
We noted that the article failed to mention the Palestinian Authority’s responsibility, under Article 17 of the Oslo Accords, to provide healthcare and vaccinate their population, and that even the Guardian routinely includes this information when covering the debate over which party is responsible for providing Palestinians COVID vaccines.
Editors promptly upheld our complaint, and added the following sentence to the paragraph we cited above:
Israel argues that, under the terms of the Oslo peace accords, the Palestinian Authority is responsible for vaccinating Palestinians.
Though we’re disappointed the new sentence employs the “Israel says..” formula, despite the fact that we sent them a link to the article within the Oslo Accords in question, it’s nonetheless a significant improvement over the original version.
