Polio vaccination in Gaza proceeds despite war

According to the Government Media Office of Hamas in Gaza, quoted in Resistance News Network: “The polio vaccination campaign in the Gaza Strip began on Sept. 1, 2024, amid the ongoing environmental, health, and humanitarian disaster caused by the ‘israeli’ occupation, which has persisted for 330 days without interruption. The vaccination campaign will be supervised by the Palestinian Ministry of Health in the Gaza Strip, in partnership with the World Health Organization (WHO), UNICEF, and United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine (UNRWA).

“The campaign targets children from 1 day to 10 years old and involves administering two drops of the vaccine orally.” Vaccinated children are marked on their hands with a pen, and there must be another vaccination two weeks later. “This vaccine is approved by the World Health Organization, and over 1.2 billion doses have been produced worldwide so far.”

Hamas states: “640,000 Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip are expected to receive this vaccination, representing over 95% of children aged 1 day to 10 years. A comprehensive plan has been finalized to ensure the success of this campaign in all governorates and neighborhoods of the Gaza Strip. … Dozens of field teams will participate in the vaccination campaign, covering all neighborhoods, alleys and centers in the Gaza Strip, as well as displacement and shelter camps and all locations where children are present in the Gaza Strip.”

According to the Gaza Ministry of Health: “The vaccination campaign is crucial and requires a ceasefire so that these health teams can perform their duties effectively. It is also essential to ensure that children and their families are not endangered while traveling from their homes to the vaccination centers and to protect these teams from the constant threat of bombardment by the ‘israeli’ occupation, which continues its genocidal war against our Palestinian people without pause.”

An article in Reuters entitled, “U.N. begins polio vaccination in Gaza as fighting rages,”  written by  Nidal Al-Mughrabi and Hussam Al-Masri, states,  “Rolling, partial ceasefires have been agreed on to allow that to happen.”  However, fighting continues in the West Bank and in Gaza. (Sept. 1)

Despite repeated requests for a ceasefire from all Palestinian resistance groups,

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu won’t end the attacks by the Israeli Occupation Forces. “The latest round of mediated negotiations in Qatar and Egypt in recent weeks have stalled again … as voices inside and outside Israel accuse Netanyahu of blocking an agreement by presenting outlandish demands to serve his political interests.” (Al Jazeera, Sept. 2)

Key sticking points continue to include Netanyahu’s insistence on not withdrawing from the Philadelphia Corridor, which constitutes Gaza’s southern border with Egypt, and the so-called Netzarim Corridor, the Israeli military route that has cut Gaza in half.

Netanyahu’s insistence on continuing this increasingly unpopular genocidal war with the support of the United States is reminiscent of the 1917 refusal by imperialist countries to end World War I. Ending this war would alienate the ruling class, to which the governments of the U.S. and Israel are beholden. In 1917, it took a revolution in Russia to end the war. 

Israel is U.S. imperialism’s main ally in West Asia.  The Zionist state has expansionist designs on Gaza, the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem. Israel is engaging in “ethnic cleansing” – by direct warfare with U.S.-supplied bombs and  by ferocious attacks by Zionist settlers, who force Palestinians off their land, backed by the Israeli Occupation Forces. 

According to Helena Cobban, of Just World Ed, “PM Netanyahu and his far-right cronies in Israel’s government have seen that the United States and its allies have done nothing significant to rein in the cruelty and extremism of their actions in Gaza. So now, they’re extending the same approach to the occupied West Bank. 

“In the northern West Bank, Israeli forces have laid siege to entire neighborhoods, cutting off supplies of water, food and electricity and tearing up roads; and they’ve launched air-raids against some built-up areas — all while claiming (as in Gaza) that they are merely targeting ‘militants.’ The governments of France and the UK (among others) have condemned Israel’s latest lethal actions in the West Bank. But Washington?? Nothing.”  

Nevertheless, on Sept. 1, the Palestinian Ministry of Health stated that medical teams in the Central Governorate were able to vaccinate 72,611 children on the first day of the emergency vaccination campaign against polio in Gaza.