An-Najah News -  In response to the urgent Israeli Supreme Court petition that Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel submitted Israeli health authorities have committed to opening clinics and testing centers via the health fund clinics in Shufat refugee camp and Kufr Aqab neighborhood starting today.

Israel committed yesterday to open health clinics and coronavirus testing centers for some 150,000 Palestinians living in East Jerusalem neighborhoods beyond Israel’s separation wall said Adalah in a press release

Adalah attorneys filed the Supreme Court petition on 8 April, in coordination with the Civic Coalition for Palestinian Rights in Jerusalem, demanded testing centers or mobile testing centers for the neighborhoods’ residents; training for local clinics in these neighborhoods to conduct the tests; and other remedies that would make virus detection tests accessible.

These areas are among the city’s most overcrowded and densely-populated, and this puts the 150,000 residents – who hold Israeli-issued identity cards – at grave risk for contracting and spreading coronavirus. 

In their response to Adalah’s petition, Israeli authorities, included data from Israel’s Magen David Adom national emergency ambulance service indicating that of the 2,600 Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem neighborhoods examined at a coronavirus testing site in Jabal al-Mukabber only 20 were residents of Kufr Aqab and just five were residents of the Shufat refugee camp.

The Israeli Health Ministry is responsible for ensuring the health and well-being of residents, as the Palestinian Health Ministry is banned from providing services there.