A teenager receives a dose of a vaccine against the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) as Israel urged more 12- to 15-year-olds to be vaccinated, citing new outbreaks attributed to the more infectious Delta variant, at a Clalit healthcare maintenance organization in Tel Aviv, Israel June 21, 2021. REUTERS/Amir Cohen

JNS.org – Israeli Health Ministry Director General Hezi Levi said on Monday that Israel was using the COVID-19 vaccines that the Palestinian Authority had rejected.

The vaccines Israel had planned to send to the PA are being used “right now, today, to vaccinate adults and their children,” Levi told Channel 12.

“We didn’t transfer a single vaccine that had expired,” said Levi, dismissing the PA’s assertion that some 1 million vaccines in question were too close to their expiration date to be safe.

Asked why, then, the PA didn’t want the vaccines, Levi said, “I leave that to them to explanation … but all the vaccines came from the SLE [healthcare logistics center] warehouses under strict supervision with the correct temperature, and everything we provide the PA is within the use-by date.”

After Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s office announced on Friday that an agreement had been reached to transfer between 1-1.4 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine to the Palestinians, PA Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh said that the PA would not accept them.

PA government spokesman Ibrahim Milhim said at a Friday news conference, “After the technical staff of the [PA] Ministry of Health examined the first dose of the vaccine, it became clear that the doses did not meet the specifications detailed in the agreement,” Maariv reported.

PA officials said that some 30 percent of eligible Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza have received at least one dose, according to Reuters. This figure includes more than 100,000 Palestinian workers, vaccinated under the auspices of the Jewish state, who come into regular contact with Israelis.