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No Arab organisation like the Arab League or the OIC has announced any humanitarian or economic package
On April 17, Palestinians marked Prisoners’ Day to remind the world of the plight of thousands of Palestinians imprisoned in Israeli military jails. This year a detainee’s commission is urging Israel to release hundreds of sick inmates with poor health, who are at high risk of contracting COVID-19.
While the ravages of Corona virus continue in every nation on earth, it seems that Arab countries remain unable, or unwilling to formulate a collective strategy to help the poorest and most vulnerable Arabs survive the deadly virus and its economic fallout.
Though internationally, solidarity amongst nations to counter the pandemic is increasing, we are yet to see any pan-Arab initiative that aims to provide material support to countries and regions that have been hit hardest by the Corona pandemic.
The absence of any collective Arab response is similar to Europe’s systemic failure, exhibiting ‘solidarity’ when it is financially opportune, and turning its back, sometimes at its own brethren, when there are no economic incentives.
Two cases in this regard are Greece and Italy. When Greece faced economic ruin the response of other EU countries was aimed to profit from its financial crisis and not to help a brother EU nation. All the talk of European solidarity, fraternity and community floundered at the altar of greed and unhindered profits.
Recently while Italy was facing unbearable burdens of the deadly Coronavirus, and how to handle it to ensure safety of its population, there was no help forthcoming from any European nation.
In fact, a sign of the changing times is that Chinese and Russian aids poured in to help the United States, which now has the world’s largest number of Corona infected cases.
Just like EU’s unresponsiveness to its member countries, we are also faced with absence of any Arab solidarity to counter this pandemic, though at an individual level, most of the countries have taken strong steps to safeguard their populace. For example, Saudi Arabia has suspended Umrah for all foreigners and the same may apply to Hajj this year. UAE has taken very strong measures to contain the pandemic. But the most glaring absence in all this is the so-called Arab solidarity.
What we have seen is only rhetoric and impractical statements. No Arab organisation like the Arab League or the OIC has announced any humanitarian or economic package to face the consequences of the pandemic and work for the welfare of the poor in the region.
UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, issued a ‘global ceasefire appeal’ in late-March, pleading to the world, especially to warring Middle Eastern nations, to cease fire and to unite all efforts in one single war against the Corona virus. However, that is not seen or acted upon, war in Libya has escalated; number of Palestinians killed in the occupied West Bank continues relentlessly; the refugee exodus out of Syria, Turkey, and other Middle Eastern countries continues unabated.
Amidst all this, the issue of more than 5,000 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails remain not on top of agenda of any one. On the occasion of Palestinian Prisoners’ Day, author Ramzy Baroud was quoted by Palestine Chronicle as saying that it is not just those who are in Israeli prisoners who are detained, ‘all Palestinians are experiencing some sort of imprisonment’.
He goes on to explain: ‘All Palestinians in some way are prisoners. If you are a Palestinian living in the Gaza Strip, born under siege in the Gaza Strip in the last 14 years, and you have never left Gaza … you are a prisoner’. So it is just not a question about the welfare of Palestinians languishing in Palestinian jails, but about the whole Palestinian populace, which is forced to live in pathetic conditions, too.
What Baroud says is true, as the appalling living conditions in the Gaza and elsewhere in the occupied territories, put Palestinians at great risk during the pandemic, in absence of any well managed hospital system and lack of resources available with the local authorities, to handle the pandemic and its fallout.
There have been reports in the media that how the prisoners who tested positive for Corona virus have been released immediately by the Israeli authorities. However, there are no reports of maintaining any social distancing in the overcrowded prisons or providing any medical facilities to the prisoners. All the paraphernalia is being used to ensure the safety of Israeli prison authorities, not the Palestinian prisoners.
Meanwhile, Corona has also forced countries to take benevolent and charitable actions, after years of aid cuts the United States is giving five million dollars to the Palestinians to help them fight the corona virus epidemic, a US envoy said last week.
Announcing the donation on Twitter, US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman said, ‘I’m very pleased the USA is providing $5M for Palestinian hospitals and households to meet immediate, life-saving needs in combating COVID-19’. The five million dollars will be international disaster assistance from the US Agency for International Development, according to the State Department’s website.
There was no immediate comment from the Palestinians on this American largesse. Since 2018, the Trump administration has cut hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to the Palestinians. The cuts were aimed to pressurise Palestinians back to the negotiating table for peace talks with Israel. On their part, the Palestinians accuse Trump of pro-Israel bias after he declared Jerusalem Israel’s capital and later moved the American embassy there from Tel Aviv and in turn have boycotted Trump’s peace efforts since 2017. The latest Middle East plan unveiled by Trump in January this year in was accepted enthusiastically by Israel, while the Palestinians rejected it out of hand, mainly as it endorsed Israel keeping its settlements in West Bank territory it captured during the 1967 war.
Let us pray and hope that Corona pandemic may give an opportunity to all Arab leaders to work out a plan for Arab unity and united fight against war, disease and hunger, the three biggest issues facing the Arab world and elsewhere too, besides striving to build a new society which cares for all in a collective manner, sharing resources and wealth, in accordance with true Islamic teachings.