The Palestinian Authority canceled a deal to receive up to 1.4 million Pfizer vaccine doses from Israel. The reason given for rejecting the doses is that the expiration date is close and violates its Health Ministry’s specifications. Israeli officials say that the 100,000 million doses sent to the PA on Friday do expire at the end of the month but that they are still good for use, that the PA was aware of the expiration dates before it agreed to the deal and that the additional doses set to be sent to the PA expire later.
Under the deal, Israel would supply the PA with the doses and would receive an equal number back when the PA receives its Pfizer doses from the company later this year.
Palestinians had accused the PA of accepting inferior vaccine doses and that accepting the vaccines is a form of “normalizing” relations with Israel.