As of 23 July, persons entering Switzerland from the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) are legally mandated to go into quarantine. The OPT is now identified as a country or area with an increased risk of coronavirus infection. This prompted a Swiss friend of mine to send me a text message asking, “Palestine now is on the list of corona quarantine countries of Switzerland. How bad is the situation”? I answered, “It is bad, but it can get worse”.

This bad situation can get worse, because in places like Palestine, inequality is structural, politically-constructed and indeed reflects the overall power imbalances between the colonised and coloniser. Yet, the pandemic offers the international community another opportunity to address the root causes of these structural inequalities, and stop manoeuvring around the problem.

Published at Geneva Solutions, 8 September 2020

Click Here to Read the Article