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December 18th, 2021 
Awake Goy The Latest:
- 465,829 Palestinians tested positive for COVID-19; 456,978 recoveries; 4,858 deaths
- Of those who tested positive, more than 246,000 live in the West Bank and 188,922 live in Gaza
- 1,353,291 Israelis tested positive; 1,338,654 recoveries; 8,230 deaths
This week we are pleased to announce that we are publishing the 80th edition of our COVID-19 newsletter. We launched at the outset of the emergence of the coronavirus in March 2020 and committed to following the story until it passed. We never expected some 19 months later the pandemic would still be ongoing.
As time progressed, the story changed, and we are no longer covering the ins and outs of strict closures across the West Bank, or the lack of hospital space in Gaza. What we see happening today is much more of a diffused issue about healthcare, and who has access to it and who does not. As such, we are retiring this newsletter for the time being and will relaunch later in 2022 with a broader scope. To keep up with Mondoweiss’s other reporting from and about Palestine you can sign up for our other newsletters here. But for this final edition of the Mondoweiss Coronavirus newsletter, we’d like to look back at our coverage has evolved from the beginning.
Early in the pandemic we brought you stories about the economy shutting down as lockdowns stretched across the globe. We followed entrepreneurs in the region who converted over their businesses to produce items to help slow the spread of the virus, like the team at Babyfist whose factory stopped sewing apparel and started making masks:
“The team at Babyfist, the Palestinian clothing line known for the subversive feminist campaign “not your habibi” converted their operation to manufacture protective wear in response to COVID-19. Their Gaza-based factory churned out 40,000 face masks in this first cycle of production.”
A few months later we also profiled a women’s collective handcrafting face masks in a refugee camp outside of Ramallah.
The first easing of restrictions on movement happened around Ramadan 2020. At that time there was only a few hundred confirmed cases of COVID-19 because of strict closures:
“It has been two months since a state of emergency was declared in the West Bank, shuttering most of public life in an attempt to slow the spread of the coronavirus. The closures were initially aggressive, kicking tourists out of the region, setting up isolation centers in hotels, and erecting medical checkpoints. Restrictions have eased in the last week in part due to the Muslim holiday of Ramadan, a month-long celebration that includes fasting between sunrise and sunset.”
Palestinian artist paints a mural to raise awareness on wearing face masks amid the coronavirus pandemic in Gaza City on October 22, 2020. (Photo: Mahmoud Ajjour/APA Images)
Yet, Yumna Patel revealed in her reporting from Bethlehem that Palestinians were not adhering to public masking and social distancing—indeed the once rigorous network of health checkpoints that had enclosed villages in nighttime curfews were gone weeks before the local state of emergency ended. Here’s Patel:
“The reality that things are not under control is blatantly obvious to the average citizen walking through the streets of Bethlehem, Ramallah, Nablus, or any of the major cities in the West Bank. Markets are crowded, people are going about their shopping as normal, and there’s not a mask in sight.
Adding,
“Everyone I speak to is frustrated; frustrated with the government’s inability to seemingly make a decision and stick to it, frustrated by the state of financial and economic despair being faced by most of the country, and frustrated by the fact that there is no clear direction on what we should be doing.”
Palestinian workers sterilize vegetables ordered by customers in the central Gaza Strip on November 30, 2020. (Photo: Ashraf Amra/APA Images)
By late 2020, lax observance of measures to prevent the transmission of the coronavirus was ubiquitous across the West Bank. We reported officials enacted Emergency Law that allowed issuing a $1,400 fine and up to one year in prison for those who did not obey lockdown rules. Businesses were eager to reopen despite regulations that limited their hours and the number of customers. All in all, in 2020 the Palestinian economy shrank by 8%, according to the World Bank.
Months later in March 2021 when vaccines were first rolled out, we caught up with physicians in Gaza who were working in the trenches of COVID-19 wards, without vaccine protection and anxiously awaiting their first shots. We reported:
“In an empty ward at Al-Shifa hospital used to treat COVID-19 patients before transferring them to the specialized departments sits Dr. Mohammed Abdelmanem, a 47-year-old pulmonologist who expects to get a first dose of the coronavirus vaccine this week. The schedule was outlined by Gaza’s ministry of health, and Abdelmanem will be among the first few thousand to be inoculated out of a population of almost two million. He says he’s looking forward to finally not being afraid.
‘It is really reassuring that now we can go back home without all the worries,’ he said, later adding, ‘that was a real danger to go home every time with worry that you may infect your family.’”
From just a few thousand doses administered to healthcare workers to around 50% of the population vaccinated in 2021, Palestinians still have a ways to go in terms of controlling COVID-19, but they are in a more manageable place today. Thank you for sticking with us over these last two years. It’s been our pleasure to bring you news and opinion from the region.
We’ll see you in a few months. Stay safe!
BEFORE YOU GO – Stories like the one you just read are the result of years of efforts by campaigners and media like us who support them by getting the word out, slowly but doggedly.
That’s no accident. Our work has helped create breakthroughs in how the general public understands the Palestinian freedom struggle.
Mondoweiss plays a key role in helping to shift the narrative around Palestine. Will you give so we can keep telling the stories in 2022 that will be changing the world in 2023, 2025 and 2030?
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