On Sunday, for the first time since Israel began implementing quarantine measures to combat the coronavirus – nearly two months – the government will begin taking steps to ease the restrictions on the public. Some of the country's economic activity is to be revived. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will make the final decision on the matter on Saturday night.
In a cabinet meeting on Thursday, most ministers said they were in favor of reopening the economy, at least gradually. The only attendees who sided with maintaining restrictions in place, with only slight adjustments, were Health Ministry representatives. Throughout the discussion, Netanyahu almost entirely refrained from taking a position.
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The meeting was held with the help of the Zoom application, with some of the ministers attending from the cabinet room in the Prime Minister's Office in Jerusalem, others from the Defense Ministry's Kirya headquarters in Tel Aviv, and Netanyahu himself from an adjacent room at the PMO.
The prime minister accepted the National Security Council's recommendation. The recommendation was formulated with the help of a team of experts headed by Prof. Eli Waxman from the Weizmann Institute of Science, which integrated and balanced the positions of the health, finance, economy and defense ministries respectively.
The prime minister decided to opt for a cautious, responsible and phased plan that will consist of opening businesses on a limited and measured basis. The Finance Ministry will formulate a pilot plan for several commercial industries that could reopen, subject to Health Ministry guidelines and certain criteria. Additionally, sports activities will be permitted for up to two people at a time and up to 500 yards from their homes, as will individual special education.
Over the next 48 hours, the professional teams will prepare proposals and map out industries that could participate in the pilot, along with detailed protocols for businesses and companies looking to reopen and behavioral guidelines for the public. Changes could be made in accordance with discussions that will be ongoing over the next two days.
With respect to recent discussions, the prime minister cautioned that any plan must be "gradual and responsible." The PMO said in a statement that the NSC "spoke with many countries across the globe on the matter [of easing quarantine restrictions] and learned about the various challenges and proposals. The prime minister and other ministers have been presented with all the alternatives throughout the discussions."
Defense Minister Naftali Bennett said at Thursday's meeting that the economy must be revived as soon as possible and presented his own plan to that end. He stressed there was an urgent need to appoint a "national project manager with full authority to establish a mechanism for testing, researching and disseminating information."
Interior Minister Aryeh Deri presented a similar position and said, "We need to ease the quarantine and allow the economy to slowly return to normal. There are optimistic figures and we must let certain industries go back to work. I am very much in favor of lifting restrictions. However, we also need legislation requiring people to wear protective masks and gloves and to enforce it, in contrast to what is happening now. People who go into the public sphere without masks and gloves need to be fined. Easing the quarantine and the return to work must be done with a great deal of caution."
Meanwhile, Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan, said: "We don't need to wait until we drop to 100 or fewer new patients per day to ease the quarantine. The standard should mainly be the number of patients in critical condition, and in that regard, the number has dropped significantly; therefore we need, and can, start lifting restrictions immediately."
Erdan added that the greatest concern was the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
"The two million people who will be fasting over the upcoming month traditionally break that fast every evening with large feasts, and what we decide here will affect the atmosphere and level of obedience from that perspective as well. This is why the most important thing over the next few days is to invest in dialogue with the Arab leadership in Israel because this month could precipitate large infection outbreaks that will necessitate a return to quarantine. Public relations and dialogue and of course enforcement [are imperative] in conjunction with the Arab municipalities," he said.
