Palestinian FM Calls on UN to Provide Protection to Palestinian Civilians

Dozens of extremist Jewish settlers, escorted by Israeli soldiers, raid al-Tuwanah, one of the nine hamlets of Masafer Yatta, near Hebron. (Photo: via Social Media)

January 30, 2021

A sharp rise in the Israeli army and Jewish settler attacks against Palestinian civilians in the occupied West Bank prompted the Ministry of Foreign Affairs today to call on the United Nations Secretary-General and to the Security Council to intervene and provide protection to the vulnerable Palestinian population under Israeli occupation.

“The Secretary-General of the United Nations and the Security Council must assume their responsibilities designated by international law and provide international protection to our people and their just and legitimate national rights,” said the Ministry in a statement, condemning the ongoing attacks by Israeli soldiers and Jewish settlers against the Palestinian people and their rights.

The statement said that Jewish settlers have intensified their attacks and terror acts against the Palestinian civilians, their lands, and their properties in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem. 

“The escalation in settler attacks is now dominating the scene on the ground in the occupied Palestinian territory, and is manifested in various forms of killing, damaging property, seizing land, going after farmers, uprooting trees, and killing of livestock, among other forms of criminal escalation with the support of the occupying army,” said the Foreign Ministry.

The last of these attacks, the statement read, was against the archeological site of Khan al-Lubban al-Sharqiya, near Nablus.

The Ministry warned against treating settler attacks as normal and common incidents that recur daily without taking into consideration their dangerous consequences on Palestinian rights.

 

Palestinian family recalls humiliation by Israeli forces

Palestinians holding photos and banners gather to commemorate 9 members including 6 children of Sawarka family killed at their home during Israeli air raid on November 19, 2020 [Ali Jadallah/Anadolu Agency]

January 30, 2021

Members of a Palestinian family revealed shocking details of assault and humiliation by Israeli occupation forces following a raid on their home in the town of Issawiya in occupied East Jerusalem, reports Anadolu Agency.

During the assault which happened at dawn on Thursday, Israeli forces "used electric shocks against the Dari family" as well as "beating, kicking, slapping and cursing", according to testimonies given by family members to the Wadi Hilweh Information Center.

The family said Israeli forces stormed their house and brutally assaulted two of their sons, 13-year-old minor Mahad Dari and his 18-year-old brother Muhammad Dari, before taking them into custody for several hours in a police station in West Jerusalem. The two were not even allowed to wear their shoes and winter clothes despite the cold and rainy weather, the family said.

They [the Israeli police] stormed the house and beat everyone brutally and used electric guns against anyone who objected. We were blindfolded, slapped, and kicked. They handcuffed me and my brother and forced us to kneel down and kicked us when we fell on the ground. They did not treat us as human beings,

Mahad Dari recounted.

For his part, Marwan Dari, the boy's father, said he was verbally abused and sustained many injuries, including losing his teeth due to beatings by Israeli forces while trying to protect his two sons.

 

New Year's Resolution between Israel and Palestine – Cartoon [Sarwar Ahmed/MiddleEastMonitor]

Muhammad Abu al-Hummus, a member of the Issawiya Defense Committee, told Anadolu Agency that the town of Issawiya has been witnessing almost daily incursions for more than two years by the Israeli police, along with arrests, beatings, and the firing of tear gas canisters in the middle of the crowded Palestinian homes.

"Since the start of the campaign at the end of 2018, one Palestinian has died, and 250 injuries have been recorded that include eye-gouging", Abu al-Hummus said, adding that 1,450 people have also been arrested and women and children terrorised and beaten during the same period.

Comparing the situation in Issawiya to a "small Gaza", Abu Al-Hummus said Israeli police deliberately fire tear gas canisters in residential areas "without paying attention to the negative health effects, especially in light of the spread of the coronavirus".

The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned the incident in a press release and held the Israeli authorities fully responsible for the violations which amounted to "war crimes and crimes against humanity".

The Israeli forces have denied the accusations by the Dari family, saying it was "filled with inaccuracies to the point of completely distorting reality," Israeli daily Haaretz reported.

"The family are the ones who tried to obstruct the arrest, using violence and threats. The Border Police officers acted at the scene to create a buffer between the family and the investigators," it added.

The absurdity of demanding Gaza get its own COVID-19 vaccines

Israel can’t cherry-pick its obligations to Gaza while undermining every facet of Palestinian self-rule — especially during a pandemic.

 

Palestinian Health Ministry crews conduct medical tests in Rafah, Gaza, on January 14, 2021. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)

By Tania Hary January 27, 2021

More than 15 years ago, Israel pulled its settlers out of Gaza and dismantled its military installations there. Even prior to the “disengagement,” Israel began crafting a narrative whereby it was “leaving Gaza” and would no longer owe any obligations to its Palestinian residents. In court and in Foreign Ministry briefs, it argued that there hadn’t been an occupation in Gaza, but in any case, if there had, it was now over.

To the press and in public statements, Israeli officials patronized Palestinians in the strip, saying they were welcome to prove that they were worthy of a state of their own by demonstrating whether or not they could turn Gaza into the new Singapore of the Middle East.

Anyone paying attention at the time knew this would be impossible — not because Palestinians are inherently corrupt or incapable of self-rule, as the narrative went — but because of the reality on the ground. Israel never relinquished its control over Gaza, including over its crossings, sea, and airspace. The creation of the State of Israel, some 60 years earlier, had displaced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, many of whom became refugees in a narrow strip of land not intended to house so many for so long. What should have been a temporary crisis turned into a permanent nightmare of dispossession and neglect.

By 2005, Gaza had already experienced 38 years of Israeli military rule from inside the territory and a decade of “self-governance” under the Palestinian Authority, as provided for under the Oslo Accords. Then, like now, the PA was expected to assume all the burdens of sovereignty without enjoying any of the benefits, such as paying for healthcare without having control over the economy.

In the more than 15 years since the disengagement, rather than facilitating the conditions that may have been conducive to making Gaza more like Singapore, Israel has done the opposite. It has repeatedly denied, blocked, and even destroyed the foundations of Gaza’s struggling economy and civilian infrastructure. It has done this through closure, repeated military campaigns, and continued control over Gaza’s airspace, territorial waters, border crossings, population registry, and the majority of its electricity and fuel supply. None of these facets of self-rule were handed over to Gaza in 2005. On the contrary — each and every one of them has been leveraged by Israel as a tool of pressure, cajolement, and punishment.

Yes, Israel faces legitimate security concerns, but even according to the argument that it needs to maintain control for security reasons, control should translate into responsibility. Unfortunately, it doesn’t. For example, Israel reserves the right to control Gaza’s crossings, but doesn’t feel any obligation to ensure that they stay open or function to their full capacity.

Last summer, in response to incendiary objects being launched from Gaza, Israel closed Gaza’s only commercial crossing, leading to a fuel shortage and shutdown of the strip’s power plant. Millions of people living through a pandemic struggled with even longer power outages than usual, affecting hospitals, businesses, and homes. Since last March, it has restricted travel between Gaza and Israel and the West Bank to an even greater degree than before. Despite fluctuations in its internal regulations to control the spread of the virus, its “coronavirus closure” on Gaza has gone virtually unchanged. Israel doesn’t feel any duty to facilitate access for Palestinians in Gaza, and when it does, it does so in what it sees as an act of charity.

Palestinians wearing face masks walk in a main street in Rafah, Gaza on November 19, 2020. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)

The reality of Israel’s decades-long relationship with Gaza is a microcosm and the most extreme expression of Israel’s relationship with the occupied Palestinian territory as a whole. Even in the West Bank, where settlements sit alongside Palestinian communities, where rockets aren’t fired, and where there is no excuse of a Rafah Crossing with Egypt (which is anyway closed and doesn’t lead to Gaza’s main commercial markets), Israel denies its obligations to Palestinians, including now, the obligation to distribute the vaccine for COVID-19 equitably.

The Palestinian Authority is working with the World Health Organization and other international partners to try to secure doses of vaccines, while simultaneously calling on Israel to meet its obligations under international law to ensure the well-being of the 4.5 million Palestinians living under its military control in both Gaza and the West Bank. So far, Israel has agreed to transfer vaccines coming from abroad to the Palestinian territory, but refuses to provide them. Absurdly, teenagers and other young, healthy populations in Israel are receiving the vaccine before frontline medical workers, the elderly, and immunocompromised Palestinians living in close proximity.

It could be that the PA and its partners eventually manage to inoculate the Palestinian population, even if Israel continues to disavow its responsibility to provide the vaccine. Delaying the arrival of the vaccine for the elderly, at-risk and for medical staff necessarily means more suffering and death.

The PA and the Hamas de facto authority in Gaza must continue to struggle to provide for the needs of their people to the fullest extent possible in the current circumstances. They, too, bear obligations under the albeit broken doctrine of Oslo. But as the occupying power, Israel cannot transfer its responsibilities ­­— and most certainly not when it continues to undermine the ability of Palestinian authorities to fulfill theirs.

Meanwhile, Israel continues to cherry-pick the clauses that are convenient for maintaining control of the occupied territory without any accountability. The denial of vaccines is just the latest, and a particularly stark example of the deadly consequences of letting Israel get away with it.

 

After 15-year wait, Palestinian elections face new obstacles following law amendments

Doubt cast on objective behind recent presidential decrees that might threaten first elections since 2006

Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh (C, front row) and representatives of Palestinian factions gather at the Palestinian embassy in Beirut on 3 September 2020 for video conference talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (screen) in Ramallah (AFP)

By Adam Khalil- 30 January 2021

As Palestinian factions prepare to travel to Cairo next month to hold talks on elections, which, if held, would be the first in 15 years, new obstacles have surfaced with President Mahmoud Abbas's amendments to laws that experts say could protect him from undesired results. 

The Cairo dialogue is reportedly set to take place in the Egyptian capital in the first week of February. It will bring together different Palestinian factions to discuss the issues stalling unity ahead of elections. 

Palestine’s main political movements, Fatah and Hamas, have in recent months renewed reconciliation efforts, mainly in an attempt to form a united front following normalisation agreements between Israel and four Arab countries.

Palestine's electoral process threatens to shore up the status quo

Read More »

Both movements, according to experts, saw in the elections a viable way to protect themselves from the respective challenges they face with the changing climate in the region. 

According to a decree issued by Abbas's office on 15 January, the Palestinian Authority (PA), which has limited self-rule in the occupied West Bank, will hold legislative elections on 22 May, a presidential vote on 31 July, and National Council elections on 31 August.

While Hamas, the ruler of the besieged Gaza Strip, has agreed to participate in the elections, to be held successively and not concurrently, the president's moves to introduce judicial and legal amendments have raised doubts among Palestinian civil society and political forces about their objective and potential impact on the elections.

The Palestinian official Gazette earlier this month published the legal decisions issued by Abbas, four days before he ordered elections to be held, including Law No. 1 of 2021, which amends Law No. 1 of 2007, or what is called the Original Law, regarding general elections. 

Some of the amendments pertain to the period in which legislative and presidential elections are held and those who are qualified to run in the polls. Additionally, all references to "Palestinian Authority" in the Original Law are to be replaced with "State of Palestine".

Other decisions issued stipulate the formation of new regular courts, the establishment of an independent administrative judiciary at two levels, amending the Judicial Authority Law, and promoting a number of judges while referring six judges to early retirement.

Abbas's grip

These amendments, according to experts, have put the judiciary in "Abbas's grip," and through them the Palestinian president has prepared to fortify himself if the ballot boxes come out without the results he seeks. 

The decisions he has issued may turn the forthcoming Cairo dialogue "upside down," according to one Hamas official, as a range of pressing issues, relating to security, supervision of the electoral process, and public freedoms, also need to be discussed.

However, the media office chief of the Mobilisation and Organisation Commission in Fatah, Munir al-Jaghoub, does not see in these amendments an obstacle to the success of the Cairo dialogue and of holding the elections.

"President Abbas issued decrees and made amendments that preceded [Hamas political bureau chief Ismail] Haniyeh's letter in which he announced Hamas' approval to successive elections," Jaghoub told Middle East Eye, downplaying the timing of the president's move.

"The judiciary is one of the files that will be discussed in Cairo, and Fatah is keen on holding elections as a way out of the current reality that has dragged out since the split in 2007." 

'These amendments are a fortification of Abbas's unstated positions'

- Wasfi Qabha, Hamas official

He added that Fatah, of which Abbas is the chairman, wants elections that renew legitimacy and reunify the Palestinian political system.

Hamas, for its part, has not hidden its concerns as to whether free and fair elections will be held, despite receiving Arab and Russian guarantees, which paved the way to Haniyeh sending a reconciliation letter to Abbas on 2 January.

One official source in Hamas told MEE that the movement did not waive its condition for simultaneous elections of its own volition, but the decision was rather a result of pressures and regional developments, particularly in light of the normalisation agreements.

Wasfi Qabha, a Hamas official in the occupied West Bank, said that Hamas is going to the elections as a way out of the restrictions it has long been facing, especially the security persecution targeting it in the West Bank, whether by the Palestinian Authority or Israel.

Hamas does not have the option to refuse joining the elections. Qabha said that the movement wants to prove to the Palestinian people, and everyone else, that it is "the protector of the national project, and that it is present in the field of politics as well as in the field of resistance".

Qabha acknowledged that Abbas's amendments to the judiciary have added to the fears that Hamas already has.

"These amendments are a fortification of Abbas's unstated positions," he said, adding that, under these amendments, the Palestinian Authority can go to court to contest and cancel the election results if they do not conform to what it wants.  

"Abbas and his team, and behind them the international community, want to deter Hamas and contain it with democracy," Qabha said.

"After they failed to do so in the 2006 elections, which ended in unwanted results in which Hamas won a majority, they will try again with an improved plan in the upcoming elections."

Hamas' motivations

Asked why Hamas would still participate in such elections, Qabha said the movement would not withdraw from the scene and give the impression that it was unable to compete.

Palestine politics: Could a unified leadership and elections herald a new era?

Read More »

"The elections are a national entitlement, and Hamas wants to pull the rug from under Fatah's feet, which puts sticks in the wheels and does not want real elections," he said.

Regarding whether a joint list with Fatah is an option that might fortify the results, Qabha said that Hamas does not mind, but, on a personal level, he is opposed to such a course of action, which would politically require that either Fatah acquiesce to the Hamas programme or Hamas to conform to Fatah's.

"We are facing judicial amendments aimed at more controls to form a total political theatre, and prepare Abbas legally, judicially and politically for everyone to go to a match where the result has already been fixed," lawyer Salah Abdel-Ati, head of the International Commission to Support Palestinian Rights, said. 

"[According] to amended election law, the president of the Supreme Judicial Council, nominated by Abbas, would appoint court judges, contrary to consensus and the law, and therefore the election appeals court will be under the control of President Abbas."

Political analyst Hani Habib believes that, motivated by different "dilemmas," Fatah and Hamas approached each other and both have found in the elections the "available exit".

According to Habib, many factors have led to the current developments regarding the elections, the most dangerous of which is the Arab normalisation with Israel, and the possibility that Qatar will eventually join that circle, in addition to the changing political scene in Washington with the new administration.

"Hamas is looking for a vital area for itself in the Palestinian interior through an electoral process in anticipation of possible tightening in the region's capitals," Habib told MEE.

"Meanwhile, the Fatah-led PA sees the elections as necessary to create an atmosphere in the event the Biden administration decides to revive the peace process with Israel."

Although Fatah and Hamas have agreed to elections out of necessity rather than conviction, their taking place is still in doubt, in light of the "formidable obstacles" awaiting the parties in Cairo.

'If the legislative results are contrary to the influential party, who guarantees that the presidential decree is respected and conducts presidential elections and then the National Council?

- Hani Habib, analyst

Habib believes that either of the parties may resort to "torpedoing" the understandings reached and thwarting the elections if the results do not work in their favour.  

While presiding over a session of the Fatah Revolutionary Council in Ramallah this week, Abbas threatened all those who deviate from the organisational consensus and ran for the elections with a separate list, according to what was published by the local news agency.

"Hamas does not disagree with all of President Abbas's amendments to the judiciary and the decrees to amend the laws, so some of them are in its favour," Habib said.

"The political obstacles that had been binding upon the legislative members were removed from the [vision] of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation [PLO] programme and the Independence Document (1988)." 

On the other hand, however, Abbas maintained the PA and PLO’s political programme to govern those who want to compete for the presidency, restricting candidates and violating the principle of equal opportunities.

Therefore, Fatah insisted on successive elections, as it does not want results that would be issued simultaneously and confuse the scene, and Hamas agreed to receive external guarantees.

However, Habib cast doubt on the value of international guarantees if there are no local guarantees that the election results will be respected.

"If the legislative results are contrary to the influential party, who guarantees that the presidential decree is respected and conducts presidential elections and then the National Council?"

 

EU partners with hate group to commemorate Holocaust

In a 1 April 2018 photo, Palestinian medic Razan al-Najjar helps an injured man during protests in Gaza near the boundary with Israel. Al-Najjar was deliberately shot and killed by an Israeli sniper as she performed her duties on 1 June 2018.

 

 

 Ashraf AmraAPA images

Ali Abunimah Lobby Watch-27 January 2021

The European Union is commemorating this year’s International Holocaust Remembrance Day alongside a group that applauds Israeli war crimes, including the shooting of unarmed civilians in the Gaza Strip.

On 1 February, Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, will be taking part in a memorial event with B’nai B’rith, a Jewish communal organization and Israel lobby group.

Other participants include EU anti-Semitism chief Katharina von Schnurbein and Audrey Azoulay, head of the United Nations cultural body UNESCO.

Von Schnurbein has asserted the importance of learning lessons from the German-led European Christian genocide of millions of European Jews.

The Holocaust “did not occur in vacuum,” she said. “It was caused by bystanders who were silent and kept silent in the face of injustice.”

The participation of top EU officials in this event indicates, however, that not only are these officials willing to keep silent, they are also willing to lend their prestige to an organization that cheers for injustice while smearing and dehumanizing victims and truth-tellers.

Racism and bloodlust

B’nai B’rith’s racism and bloodlust towards Palestinians is second to almost no other Israel lobby group.

In February 2019, the United Nations Human Rights Council released the report of an independent commission of inquiry into Israel’s systematic killing of unarmed Palestinians during the Great March of Return protests in Gaza.

B’nai B’rith’s enraged response was to attack the UN commission for “defaming Israel with the outrageous lie that Israel targeted ‘people with disabilities’ ” during “Hamas-organized riots.”

According to B’nai B’rith, the mass demonstrations were characterized by Palestinian violence, including targeting “Israeli soldiers with explosives and sniper attacks.”

B’nai B’rith justified Israel’s killing of civilians by asserting that “violent aggressors are not ‘protesters’ and marauding young men are not innocent ‘children.’”

These characterizations contradict the facts revealed during the investigation.

“More than 6,000 unarmed demonstrators were shot by military snipers, week after week, at the protest sites by the separation fence,” the UN commission stated.

The investigators examined the circumstances of each and every one of the 189 Palestinians killed during the protests between March and December 2018.

They found that 183 of the Palestinians killed were shot with live ammunition.

“Thirty-five of these fatalities were children, while three were clearly marked paramedics, and two were clearly marked journalists,” the UN commission stated.

The commission found “reasonable grounds to believe that Israeli snipers shot at journalists, health workers, children and persons with disabilities, knowing they were clearly recognizable as such.”

One of those health workers was Razan al-Najjar, a volunteer who was deliberately gunned down by a sniper while attempting to treat a wounded protester.

The UN commission also addressed Israeli claims – regurgitated by B’nai B’rith – that this slaughter was justifiable self-defense on the part of Israel.

The commission said it “took note of the Israeli claim that the protests by the separation fence masked ‘terror activities’ by Palestinian armed groups.”

The investigators “found however that the demonstrations were civilian in nature, with clearly stated political aims” and that “the demonstrations did not constitute combat or military campaigns.”

Even the EU – which rarely criticizes Israel and never holds it accountable – welcomed the report.

It noted that the UN commission had identified “reasonable grounds to believe that there is possible unlawfulness of the use of live ammunition by Israeli security forces against demonstrators.”

Attacking truth-tellers

As well as justifying Israel’s mass killings of Palestinians, B’nai B’rith is adamant that there should be no accountability.

In December 2019, Fatou Bensouda, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, finally concluded after five years of preliminary examination that Israeli personnel should face a formal investigation for war crimes in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

B’nai B’rith’s dismissive and bigoted response was to call it a “Palestinian canard” that Israel had committed war crimes.

“Clearly, Bensouda cannot tell the difference between war crimes and Palestinian propaganda,” B’nai B’rith stated.

The lobby group attacks virtually any international body or official who dares challenge Israel’s impunity.

During Israel’s 2014 war on Gaza, former US President Jimmy Carter and former Irish President Mary Robinson penned a joint call for an immediate end to the violence.

The two well-respected figures urged a political process that would include recognizing Hamas as a legitimate political actor on the entirely reasonable grounds that the group “cannot be wished away, nor will it cooperate in its own demise.”

It is based on similar logic that the Irish peace process could not advance without including the IRA. Similarly, the US concluded that it cannot end its involvement in Afghanistan without negotiating directly with the Taliban.

Both groups, like Hamas, were always regarded by Western governments as “terrorists.”

But B’nai B’rith would have none of this. It accused Carter – the midwife of the 1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty – and Robinson of “bias against Israel.”

And in an indication of B’nai B’rith’s tenuous grip on reality, the group claimed that “no army in the world has been more careful in preventing and limiting civilian casualties than the Israel Defense Forces.”

By the end of the 2014 Gaza war, Israel had killed more than 2,200 Palestinians, the vast majority civilians, among them over 550 children.

That death toll amounted to more than one in every 1,000 Gaza residents.

Urging escalation against Iran

There appears to be no issue where B’nai B’rith does not take the most extreme pro-Israel line.

It applauded Donald Trump’s “peace plan” that endorses Israel’s illegal annexation of the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

It even declared itself “outraged” when the EU took the minimal step of requiring that goods made in Israel’s illegal West Bank settlements be labeled as such.

B’nai B’rith also rejected another cornerstone of EU policy: the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

Instead of a negotiated international agreement with Iran, B’nai B’rith demanded “ever-tightening sanctions, combined with diplomatic isolation and the credible threat of military force.”

Close observers of B’nai B’rith will be surprised by none of this.

As I’ve reported previously, B’nai B’rith is so extreme that it denies the existence of Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank. It even sent a mission to support Israeli soldiers conducting the 2014 massacre in Gaza.

It is obviously perverse to join with such a group in any activity purporting to oppose injustice.

Anti-Semitic EU policy

Yet it is symptomatic of an EU approach that equates Holocaust remembrance with pandering to Israel lobby groups.

This week, for instance, the EU co-sponsored another Holocaust commemoration with the European Jewish Congress, an organization that spreads anti-Muslim bigotry.

It is all part of the EU’s implicitly anti-Semitic policy of equating Jews with supporters of Israel while snubbing Jews who uphold Palestinian rights and refuse to identify with the state.

This goes hand in hand with the EU’s collaboration with Israel lobby groups to redefine anti-Semitism to mean criticism of Israel’s crimes against Palestinians.

This cynical approach to Holocaust remembrance goes both ways: Israel has long tried to co-opt the memory of millions of murdered European Jews to justify its crimes against Palestinians.

In the latest insult to the memory of victims, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently nominated a genocide supporter – a former general linked to war crimes – to head Israel’s official Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem.

Of course, none of the EU officials who preach incessantly about the need to “learn from the past” uttered a word of protest.

Cuba's Soberana 02 Vaccine To Begin Phase III Trials on March 1

Soberana 02 began the second period of clinical trials last December 22 and thus became the first Latin American candidate to reach this stage, which includes almost 900 volunteers. | Photo: citmatel.cu

Published 30 January 2021 

Phase III trials are scheduled to start on March 1st, after the injectable vaccine showed in its study stages II A and II B high levels of safety and a strong immune response.

Cuba Soberana 02's vaccine candidate against COVID-19 should begin its Phase III clinical trials on March 1, the director of the Finlay Institute, Vicente Vérez, announced here today.

During a virtual appearance at the headquarters of the Pan American Health Organization on the island, in this capital, Vérez emphasized that this date is foreseen because the injectable showed in its study stages II A and II B high levels of safety, as well as a powerful immune response.

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Cuba Will Produce 100 Million Doses of Its COVID-19 Vaccine

"It also induces long-lasting memory of that immune response which, in addition to producing antibodies, makes them last," the expert pointed out.

He explained that Phase III clinical trials will have around 150,000 doses for inoculation of volunteers.

He also pointed out that with this product, the use of a third dose with a reinforcement action is being considered in order to induce an immune response of viral neutralization.

Soberana 02 began the second period of clinical trials last December 22 and thus became the first Latin American candidate to reach this stage, which includes almost 900 volunteers.

It is a conjugated vaccine, in which the virus antigen, the receptor binding domain (RBD), is chemically linked to the tetanus toxoid, has two formulations and the second one achieved great effectiveness in animals.

Cuba is currently working on the creation of capacities to produce 100 million doses of Soberana 02 in order to meet the needs of the country and also of other nations interested in the injectable.

Recently, in a meeting with foreign press agencies accredited in the country, Vérez stressed that the strategy to commercialize it has a combination of humanity and impact on world health.

He clarified that all foreigners who arrive in the country and want to be vaccinated with Cuban candidates will be able to do so.

"We are not a multinational where the financial purpose is the number one reason, our purpose is to create more health," he assured.

The Finlay Vaccine Institute, leader of this project, also developed the Soberana 01 candidate.

The Caribbean island, the first in Latin America to present its own vaccines against COVID-19, also has two other proposals developed at the Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology: Abdala and Mambisa.

For his part, the president of the Business Group of Biotechnological and Pharmaceutical Industries, Eduardo Martinez, declared that given the positive effects of the Cuban candidates, the emergency use of some of them could begin in March.