Adalah’s News

In late December 2020, Israel entered a third lockdown in an attempt to halt the surge in COVID-19 cases. In Arab towns, infection rates were also rapidly rising, reaching over 17% of total cases.

Since December, Israel has vaccinated almost 2 million residents (about 20% of the population), about 6.5% in Arab towns.

However, Israel has not provided vaccines for Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, failing to fulfill its obligations under international law. 22 Israeli, Palestinian and international human rights organizations, including Adalah, issued a joint statement calling on Israel to provide vaccines to the Palestinian health care systems as part of its duty as an occupier to take preventive measures to combat the spread of the disease.
 

Adalah and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) filed the petition on 9 September 2020, challenging the constitutionality of the law, which was legislated in a speedy process, and which grants sweeping powers to the government to deal with the pandemic without parliamentary supervision. With this new law, the Knesset transferred many of its authorities to the government, giving it the same powers that it imposed via Emergency Regulations. 

In a related case, on 10 January, the Supreme Court dismissed Adalah’s petition demanding the cancellation of all tickets/fines issued to individuals under the COVID-19 Emergency Regulations (ERs). The court ruled that given the exceptional and unstable political circumstances prevailing during the pandemic, it cannot decide that the government lacked the authority to issue the ERs.

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