It's important to distinguish between the public's sense that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has dropped the ball, that the country is in a tailspin due to the accelerated spread of the coronavirus; and the more sober view of a unity government amid the objective reality of a combined health-economic crisis.
What's happening in Israel is a regression, not a collapse. Even the prognostications produced by the various predictive models – of 200, 300, 400 seriously ill patients within a matter of weeks – don't deviate from the healthcare system's treatment capacity. But the main story is the economic aid plans presented by Netanyahu and Finance Minister Israel Katz last Thursday, which basically entail how the funds will be allotted. Making easy decisions about releasing billions of shekels more to those in need isn't the problem. The problem now is the implementation.
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The Israeli public is now discovering this problem, specifically as it pertains to two bureaucratic systems. One is that the taxation and welfare system, which is supposed to translate government decisions by putting money in people's bank accounts, is quite often disjointed. The other is the pool of experts and professionals in the healthcare system. Anyone who has ever worked in agricultural irrigation knows this. You can open the main valve, but that doesn't mean water will reach every tree. The five-inch pipe doesn't always fit with the two-inch pipe. And the two-inch pipe doesn't always connect with aluminum. And the aluminum doesn't connect with the network of plastic tubes used for drip irrigation.
Even more frustrating is that over the course of the first three months of the pandemic, when the leadership was functioning properly, the various systems were given valuable time to develop and refine the basic process of tracking, detection, and isolation essential for epidemiological research. Let's assume we weren't as familiar with the subject as they were in South Korea or Taiwan. The fact that the Health Ministry didn't request the necessary manpower for optimal detection speeds indicates that its leaders didn't understand the urgency. We were lucky the Shin Bet security agency plugged the gaps in the beginning. Then came the baseless outcry over individual privacy rights. The Shin Bet said it didn't want to be involved from the outset, was absolved of its tracking duties and was then reinstated. The entire epidemiological apparatus has been fractured and inconsistent from the start.
The protests in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem threaten to thrust the country into anarchy. The collapse of the social order would provide fertile ground for the pandemic to truly spiral out of control. Some of the protest organizers view the pandemic as an ally in their "anyone-but-Netanyahu" campaign to topple the prime minister. From Netanyahu's perspective, in most cases, there isn't much he can learn from US President Donald Trump, certainly not when it comes to handling the pandemic. Compared to New York and New Jersey, Israel is in fantastic shape. But the time has come to for Netanyahu to deliver his own Mount Rushmore speech. He needs to detail the situation, the magnitude of the challenge, the forecast. He must discharge those who are exploiting this difficult situation to catalyze political erosion and collapse.
A segment of the public justifiably feels the government has not upheld its end of the social contract; in other words, it has failed to provide an economic and medical safety net in exchange for the civil sacrifices people are required to make. This is the primary challenge. On this front, Netanyahu is not receiving the morale boost the unity government was expected to provide. Benny Gantz and Gabi Ashkenazi are sitting on the sidelines, for all intents and purposes, looking on apathetically as Netanyahu tries to get things back on track. At least in one regard, there is a sense of agreement and unity among the three leaders, and that is their diplomatic and operational activism on the Iran front.
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