• I FULLY support Nandita Dowson (Palestinians need vaccine, February 18), in asking your readers to sign a petition that calls on the UK government to remind Israel of its obligation under international conventions and share its anti-Covid vaccine with the Palestinians (See www.change.org/Vaccine4Palestine).

Having recently been fully vaccinated against Covid-19, I was quite appalled to learn that the state of Israel (in which I was born) refuses to offer vaccination to the people of Palestine – where the Covid-19 pandemic is raging under the military occupation of the West Bank and the blockaded Gaza.

The urgency of this has been underlined through an impassioned talk by the Palestinian Dr Amira Shahin who made a plea for help in getting vaccines to the Palestinians through the many blocks that appear to have been placed in their way by the Israeli state.

Under section 56 of the fourth Geneva Conventions, the occupying power has responsibility for ensuring that health care should be available to the population under occupation.

Britain as one of the high contracting parties to the Geneva Conventions should have a duty to ensure that Israel would meet its responsibility for the occupied Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.

RUTH TENNE
Goldhurst Terrace, NW6