PA daily op-ed: Settlers spread Coronavirus like suicide bombers; Israel doesn't care about Palestinian lives

Excerpt of an op-ed by Muwaffaq Matar, Fatah Revolutionary Council member and regular columnist for the official PA daily

Headline: “Israeli suicide attacks with hidden bombs”

“‘We will not agree to Israeli custody over our steps; Israel must leave us to [lead] our lives’ – [let us] analyze the important words of [PA] Prime Minister Muhammad Shtayyeh, which were said in response to the Israeli occupation authorities’ trend of approving a situation of health-based annexation of the West Bank onthe pretext of fighting the spread of the Coronavirus, according to our evaluations and viewpoint. The danger is terrible. It threatens our existence and our independent decision making, and weakens our capabilities – which were proven to be efficient – to fight the most modern weapon of mass destruction and death.

We will start with how the racist settler colonialist occupiers have proven their extraordinary capabilities to carry out quality suicide bombing attacks from afar, in other words, without explosives or explosive belts. This is because they are using the Coronavirus as the most modern biological weapon, to which as of now there is no known effective vaccine, and the only possibility of eliminating it is to stop the wheels of daily life in the afflicted society.

It is enough for them that the disease transfer to a Palestinian laborer or citizen who passes between the cities and villages in historical and natural Palestine (i.e., Israel) in order for this Palestinian to become their mobile suicide bomb, whose direct effects are greater than any weapon, even a nuclear bomb. We must remember that the atomic bomb that the American army dropped on Hiroshima, and also Nagasaki, did not destroy Japan. The destruction and death prevailed only in the two cities… but in these moments we are witness to the collapse of super powers, to defeats, to victims, and to infected people throughout the state…

The settlements control the entrances to every village and city and their strategic areas, and here lies the greatest danger, whichPrime Minister Muhammad Shtayyeh spoke about when he said: ‘The real weak point in the Palestinians’ campaign against the spread of the Coronavirus is the occupation, its settlers, its checkpoints, and all of its steps that are meant to thwart our efforts to defend our people and stop the epidemic’s spread.’

The Palestinian [PA] government has mobilized all of its human and material resources in order to stop the advance of‘the hidden bomb,’ the Coronavirus… but the occupation authorities – which were impressed by the Palestinian government’s ability to stop the number of infected while they failed in stopping the shocking and frightening rise in the number of infected and dead among them, and given the fact thatthey prefer that the wheel of finance continue turning at the expense of human life – hurried to tempt the Palestinian laborers with easements such as staying at the workplaces for an entire month.This encouraged a large part of the laborers to respond in the affirmative, and this is what Shtayyeh referred to when he said: ‘The fact that the laborers are continuing to pass with Israeli easements among their cities and villages and their workplaces, both 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) and in the settlements, constitutes a calamity for all the efforts we made at an early stage to stop the spread of the disease.’ In the end, some of them (the Palestinian laborers) [parentheses in source] discovered that the occupation authorities and the Israeli employers – and the worst of them are in the settlements – do not care about the lives of the Palestinian laborers, but rather [care] first of all about their material and financial profits.”

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.