By Bilal Ghaith Kiswani

JERUSALEM, Monday, April 13, 2020 (WAFA) -  Jerusalem doctors have warned of a large and accelerated spread of coronavirus disease in the Palestinian neighborhoods of occupied East Jerusalem amid negligence by the Israeli government of these neighborhoods and the blackout on information about the spread of Covid-19.

This warning came from the Jerusalem Doctors Network following the sudden announcement yesterday of a large number of infected cases in Silwan neighborhood of East Jerusalem.

The doctors urged Jerusalem residents to take precautionary measures in order to protect themselves from this pandemic in light of the failure of the Israeli occupation authorities to shoulder their responsibility toward the city’s Palestinian population.

Fouad Abu Hamed, director of medical services at the Medical Center in Beit Safafa, said that there was a spike in the number of corona cases in the past two days in East Jerusalem.

“We are talking about 35 cases of coronavirus in the past two days,” he said, explaining that the cases were concentrated in the neighborhood of Silwan, including al-Thuri, Ras El-Amoud and Ein al-Louzeh.

He described these numbers as “staggering and shocking,” explaining that even though the epidemic has started in West Jerusalem, it is not clear why the Israeli health ministry was intransigent in not publishing numbers related to the occupied Arab neighborhoods in Jerusalem.

“We are cooperating with doctors in personal efforts to try to track every case and every patient to obtain statistics and understand the volume of the epidemic in East Jerusalem. We are talking about dozens and the number has reached 70,” said Abu Hamed.

The epidemic in East Jerusalem’s Palestinian neighborhoods started in Beit Safafa in the south of the city where eight cases of coronavirus were confirmed. Then 15 cases were found in Beit Hanina, in the north of the city, as far as what the doctors could gather. With Silwan now, the number of known cases has reached 70 in East Jerusalem.

He denounced as reprehensible the way the Israeli Ministry of Health is handling the situation in East Jerusalem.

“It issues statistics about the Jewish neighborhoods and excludes the Arab areas despite the attempts by doctors to obtain real figures from the Ministry of Health, but to no avail. The numbers we have were gathered through personal efforts to collect data on the cases,” said Abu Hamed.

He said that while there are two testing stations in the Palestinian neighborhoods - one in Jabal al-Mukabber and another in Shufat - as well as the sick funds in Jerusalem which are also conducting tests, yet this is not enough, stressing that the real problem is in carrying out tests in the neighborhoods beyond the apartheid wall such as Kufr Aqab and Shufat refugee camp were more than 100,000 people live.

Ali Jabrini, who is familiar with the coronavirus developments in Jerusalem, said that the cases in East Jerusalem were found after the Israeli health ministry opened the two testing stations. He said the city may have 70 cases, which is new for East Jerusalem, and therefore all efforts should be in the direction of raising awareness and intensifying efforts to put an end to the spread of this disease.

‘The situation in Jerusalem is more difficult because it is hard to obtain figures from Israel about the patients. All the medical centers coordinate with the health authorities on this issue who do not care about the cases among the Palestinians in Jerusalem,” he said.

The situation in East Jerusalem three weeks ago was reassuring, but it has since changed as the numbers have soared all of a sudden, said Jabrini, explaining that the nurses and doctors in East Jerusalem are making a great effort in raising public awareness of the disease.

The Palestinian government spokesman said today in Ramallah that there are 36 unconfirmed corona cases among Palestinians in occupied Jerusalem, explaining that the Israeli authorities do not share information about them with the Palestinian government, which makes it difficult for it to track them.

He said that the Palestinian Authority is responsible for all Palestinians in the occupied territories, including East Jerusalem, but that Israel does not allow it to provide assistance to the city’s over 350,000 Palestinian residents.

M.K.