PA daily editorial: Israel is "attempting to export the Coronavirus to us"
Excerpt of an editorial of the official PA daily
Headline: “The only weakness!”
“With its racist mentality, the Israeli occupation is attempting to export the Coronavirus to us today through ‘easements’ that are uncharacteristic of it or its policies, by opening the crossings to our laborers who are working within the Green Line (i.e., Palestinian term for Israel; the Green Line is the ceasefire line between Israel and the neighboring Arab countries, 1949-1967) so that they will move without any medical supervision between their workplaces, their cities, and their villages. This supervision was decided on by the [PA] government as part of a series of its steps to limit the Coronavirus and prevent its spread among our people. In light of this fact, the Israeli occupation – withits settlers and checkpoints that are open to our laborers, and as [PA] Prime Minister Dr. Muhammad Shtayyeh emphasized two days ago [April 1, 2020] – they are ‘the weakness that threatens the failure of our steps and efforts to protect our people from this dangerous virus.’Furthermore, this is the weakness that also strives to spread rumors among us and arouse suspicious of our laborers, and also to hold them responsible for the spread of the epidemic and consider them a weakness! And this is what exposes the truth behind the Israeli easements – that they are easements of fraud and plotting!
Our laborers are not the weakness under any circumstances; rather it is the easements that exploit their livelihood in order to achieve their dangerous racist goals of harming the Palestinian means of preventing the Coronavirus. Our laborers must pay attention to this in order to not be tools of these racist goals, and also in order to protect the health of themselves, their families, their relatives, and their acquaintances, and to protect the health of their people at large.”
Green Line - 1949-1967 ceasefire line between Israel and the neighboring Arab countries (Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria) following Israel's War of Independence (1948-1949). Land within the Green Line is all part of the State of Israel since 1949. Land outside the Green Line includes East Jerusalem, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and the Golan Heights.