Daniel Estrin

With elections later this month, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is courting votes among Israel's Palestinian citizens after a controversy over LGBTQ rights.

An outgoing high official told NPR that Israel has a public health imperative to protect all Palestinians from COVID-19, plus a humanitarian obligation.

About a year ago the country's domestic intelligence agency began monitoring Israelis' movements through cellular phone location data, leading critics to say it was spying on its own citizens.

Israel is leading the world in per capita vaccinations and is reopening. In the occupied West Bank and Gaza next door, very few Palestinians are getting vaccinated.

Israel has vaccinated more of its population than any other country and this week it started opening places like gyms and the theater to people with both shots — but they have to prove it.

Israeli police reportedly sped after young Israeli settlers suspected of throwing rocks at Palestinians. In the chase, the settlers' car flipped over, killing one of them. It's caused fury.

A suspected oil tanker leak off the coast of Israel has led to the country's biggest maritime ecological disaster in years — with authorities closing beaches and beginning a massive cleanup effort.

Large swaths of the Middle East are covered in snow, sparking joy and wonder in a region that doesn't normally witness white winters.

The prize committee said Dr. Anthony Fauci, long-time head of the United States' leading infectious diseases research institute, "is the consummate model of leadership and impact in public health."

Vaccines have yet to arrive. Residents, fearing loss of income, continue to work while infected. And medical professionals including one of Gaza's few remaining heart surgeons have died from COVID-19.

The pandemic has hit the Gaza Strip hard. Many ill Palestinians cannot afford to quarantine and doctors in COVID-19 wards have struggled to supply enough oxygen for ventilators.

Israel paid a premium, locked in an early supply of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines and agreed to share data from Israel's centralized trove of medical statistics. Privacy advocates have some misgivings.

Israel agreed to provide Pfizer with a trove of medical data about its citizens in return for COVID-19 vaccine supplies. Some privacy experts there are concerned.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel's United Arab Emirates peace deal sets a precedent: Israel need not cede captured land to the Palestinians in order to win friends in the Arab world.

The Trump administration dramatically shifted U.S. policy toward Israel and the Palestinians in favor of Israel. President Biden is expected to try to repair U.S. relations with the Palestinians.

As part of the bigger picture in the agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Israel is redefining peace as something that does not require concessions in land.

Countries are taking a variety of approaches to their mass COVID-19 vaccination campaigns. NPR's international correspondents discuss the results in Germany, Israel and Brazil.

The vaccinations will start Monday or Tuesday, Health Minister Yuli Edelstein tells NPR. Thirty inmates tested positive for the coronavirus in one prison on Thursday.

The highly charged reference to South Africa's former policy of white rule has long been a Palestinian critique of Israel's treatment of its Arab citizens and the occupied territories.

The storming of the U.S. Capitol by pro-Trump extremists has shocked America's allies, and prompted denunciations. They've called it an assault on democracy, and urged a peaceful transfer of power.