Israel will begin rolling out a major coronavirus vaccination campaign next week after the prime minister reached out personally to the head of a major drug company. Millions of Palestinians living under Israeli control will have to wait much longer.

Worldwide, rich nations are snatching up scarce supplies of new vaccines as poor countries largely rely on a World Health Organization program that has yet to get off the ground. There are few places where the competition is playing out in closer proximity than in Israel and the territories it has occupied for more than half a century.

Israel's Defense Ministry said Tuesday it successfully conducted a series of live fire drills with its multi-range missile-defense system, providing protection against threats posed by arch-enemy Iran and its proxies along Israel's northern and southern borders.

Defense officials said it was the first time they have conducted an integrated test bringing together the various components. They are the "Arrow," which intercepts long-range missiles; "David's Sling," meant to shoot down medium-range missiles; and the "Iron Dome," which has been used for years to defend against incoming rocket fire from the Gaza Strip.

With Americans, Britons and Canadians rolling up their sleeves to receive coronavirus vaccines, the route out of the pandemic now seems clear to many in the West, even if the rollout will take many months. But for poorer countries, the road will be far longer and rougher.

The ambitious initiative known as COVAX created to ensure the entire world has access to COVID-19 vaccines has secured only a fraction of the 2 billion doses it hopes to buy over the next year, has yet to confirm any actual deals to ship out vaccines and is short on cash.

Germany's health minister further increased the pressure on the European Union's regulatory agency, demanding that it approve a coronavirus vaccine before Christmas, the dpa news agency reported Tuesday.

"Our goal is an approval before Christmas so that we can still start vaccinating this year," Health Minister Jens Spahn said late Monday.

Was it real?

It's all been erased so completely, so much blood has been shed and destruction wreaked over the past decade. The idea that there was a moment when millions across the Middle East wanted freedom and change so much that they took to the streets seems like romantic nostalgia.

Lebanon's military prosecution on Monday sentenced an activist to three years in prison for "collaborating" with Israel and traveling to it, a judicial source said.

The National News Agency said Kinda al-Khatib was sentenced for allegedly visiting Israel, contacting Israeli agents and providing them with security information.

Judge Fadi Sawwan, the lead judicial investigator into the port blast, has set new dates for the interrogation of caretaker PM Hassan Diab and three ex-ministers, media reports said on Monday.

Sawwan rescheduled the sessions after the four declined to show up on Monday, judicial officials told the Associated Press.

Caretaker prime minister Hassan Diab will not meet with the prosecutor investigating the Beirut port explosion as requested, persons familiar with the case said Monday, adding the premier has already given the prosecutor all the information he has.

Diab and three former Cabinet ministers were charged last week by Judge Fadi Sawwan with negligence in the massive Aug. 4 blast that killed over 200 people, injured thousands and caused widespread destruction in the capital.

An oil tanker off Saudi Arabia's port city of Jiddah suffered an explosion early Monday after being hit by "an external source," a shipping company said, suggesting another vessel has come under attack off the kingdom amid its yearslong war in Yemen.

The Singapore-flagged BW Rhine saw all 22 sailors on board escape without injury, the BW Group said in a statement. The company warned it was possible some oil leaked out from the site of the blast.

Not since World War II has a single phenomenon dominated the news worldwide as the COVID-19 pandemic has in 2020. In the United States, a tumultuous presidential election and a wave of protests over racial injustice also drew relentless coverage.