OCCUPIED JERUSALEM: Israel said Sunday it would send 5,000 coronavirus vaccine shots to the Palestinian Authority to inoculate medical personnel, following global pressure to ensure Palestinians are vaccinated.

Israeli authorities have launched an aggressive campaign to vaccinate its own citizens, but the shots have not been made available to Palestinians in the West Bank, occupied by Israel since the 1967 Six Day War. In recent weeks, the United Nations and rights groups have piled pressure on Israel to help some 4.8 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Israeli-blockaded Gaza to access vaccines, citing the Jewish state’s obligations as an occupying power.

More than three million of Israel’s nine million people have received the first of two required jabs of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, a pace widely regarded as the world’s fastest per capita. “I confirm we are going to send 5,000 vaccines to medical teams in the Palestinian Authority,” a spokesperson for Defence Minister Benny Gantz told AFP on Sunday.

She said they were from Israeli supplies, but declined to say whether they were Pfizer/BioNTech or Moderna. A Palestinian official, who requested anonymity, dismissed the shipment as “a symbolic move”. It “will not help us,” the official told AFP.