Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on Sunday that a new lockdown will be imposed across the country amid a stubborn surge in coronavirus cases, and schools and parts of the economy are expected to close in a bid to cut back. infection rates.
Starting Friday, the start of the Jewish holiday season, schools, restaurants and hotels will close, among other businesses, and Israelis will face movement restrictions. “Our goal is to stop the increase (in cases) and reduce morbidity,” Netanyahu said in a statement broadcast nationally. “I know these steps come at a difficult price for all of us. This is not the holiday we’re used to. ”The tightening of the measures marks the second time Israel has been plunged into a blockade, after a long lockdown in the spring.
That lockdown is credited with reducing what were much lower infection numbers, but it wreaked havoc on the country’s economy, causing unemployment to skyrocket.
The lockdown will remain in place for at least three weeks, at which point officials are expected to relax measures if numbers are seen to decline.
Israelis often hold large family gatherings and cram synagogues during the important Yom Kippur fast, scenarios officials feared could trigger further outbreaks.
A sticking point in the government’s deliberations on the shutdown was what the prayers would look like over the holidays.
Strict limits on the faithful led Israeli Housing Minister Yaakov Litzman, who represents ultra-Orthodox Jews, to resign from the government.
Israel has had more than 150,000 confirmed cases of the coronavirus and more than 1,100 deaths.
Given its population of 9 million, the country now has one of the worst outbreaks in the world. You are now seeing more than 4,000 daily cases of the virus.
Israel earned praise for its initial handling of the coronavirus outbreak, moving quickly to seal the country’s borders and appearing to control infections.
Since then, he has come under fire for opening businesses and schools too quickly and allowing the virus to spread uncontrollably.
Much of that criticism has been directed at Netanyahu, who has faced a public outcry over his handling of the crisis and has seen thousands of protesters arrive at his Jerusalem residence each week.
Though praised for his decisive response after the spring outbreak, Netanyahu appeared distracted by politics and personal matters, including his trial on corruption allegations, as infections spiked over the summer.
Netanyahu has also been criticized for appearing to give in to pressure from various interest groups, including most recently his ultra-Orthodox ruling partners, who appeared to have convinced him to abandon a specific city-based closure plan that would have primarily affected the ultra-Orthodox. and Arab communities.
At the Sunday press conference announcing the shutdown, Netanyahu defended his response, saying that Israel’s economy had emerged from the first shutdown in a better state than many other developed nations and that while the cases were high, the mortality figures by coronavirus in the country were lower than in other countries with similar outbreaks.
The country’s power-sharing government, made up of two rival parties that joined forces on a stated goal of fighting the virus, has also been reprimanded for the new outbreak.
The government has been accused of mismanagement, failing to adequately address the economic and health crises caused by the virus and leading the country into its second lockdown.
Meanwhile, some government ministers have pointed the finger at what they have called an undisciplined public, whom they have accused of violating restrictions against public gatherings and the wearing of masks.
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