Five reasons Israel’s new PM passed his first COVID-19 test - analysis

The COVID-19 pandemic helped put Prime Minister Naftali Bennett back on the political map and made him a viable candidate for Israel’s top job. How he handles the coronavirus will be one of the significant markers of his success or failure while in office.

Bennett became so focused on coronavirus last year that he wrote a book on the subject and published several position papers. However, sitting in the opposition, few of his strategies were ever implemented. And, if they were, he did not receive the credit for them.

Now, two weeks after being sworn in as prime minister, he was dealt his first COVID-19 test.

Then-prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu was accused of mixing politics and the pandemic for the purpose of personal gain.

Health officials told The Jerusalem Post that in the last few days, Bennett has achieved a much higher mark than his predecessor.

Here are five reasons why:

Bennett appears to be making his best effort to maintain calm and inform the public of his thoughts and plans for tackling the virus.

“There is no need to panic,” he said in a speech Tuesday night at Ben-Gurion Airport.

It was a strikingly different talk than the first ones delivered by Netanyahu at the onset of the crisis. Netanyahu immediately alerted citizens that 5,000 of them were about to die of COVID – frightening and paralyzing the public.

Instead, Bennett said: “Our goal is to cut off [the outbreak], to take a bucket of water and pour it over the fire while the fire is still small.”

Furthermore, he promised to be “very transparent with you, the Israeli public, because you deserve to know everything.”

He then reestablished the coronavirus cabinet and brought together top health officials to construct an action plan, which was shared Wednesday evening “in order not to surprise you, so that you will be able to know – if the outbreak has reached a certain level – what will happen.”

Israelis still remember staying up late, glued to their radios and TVs the night before a potential lockdown or school closure or opening, while the previous government zigzagged on its policies.

Bennett offered the public a true accounting of the country’s vaccine inventory – something Netanyahu never wanted to do, not even with his government or the Knesset.

“The vaccines that we have will mostly expire by the end of July,” the prime minister explained. “This means that to complete the two doses, one needs to receive the first vaccine by July 9. We have enough in stock for everyone – but for whoever is not vaccinated by July 9, we will not have vaccines for later.”

The failure of Netanyahu’s government to effectively manage Ben-Gurion Airport played a major role in exacerbating the coronavirus crisis, which ultimately led to many of the country’s more than 6,000 deaths.

While his administration did make a rule that people could not travel to and from countries with high infection without special permission – and returnees had to enter isolation – there was no one monitoring entrances and exits and there were no sanctions attached.

Isolation was never really monitored and only a few fines were handed out.

But Bennett seems to have a no-tolerance policy for variants sneaking in through the country’s borders.

When it became apparent that the current outbreak was mostly caused by breaches of quarantine by people returning from abroad, Bennett, together with Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz, Defense Minister Benny Gantz and Transportation Minister Merav Michaeli immediately took a tour of the airport complex and came up with plans to crack down.

They expanded testing capabilities – and another testing complex is expected to be built – instituted fines and closed dangerous loopholes in the regulations.

“Everyone who enters Israel will have an inspection at the airport, whether vaccinated or unvaccinated, Israeli or foreign,” Horowitz said.

People who break isolation will be fined NIS 5,000 and it is expected there will be a fine of thousands of shekels for anyone who travels to a dangerous country.

Bennett has maintained since September 2020 a policy of masks instead of closure – if everyone wears a mask, Israel could defeat coronavirus in five to six weeks, he claimed then.

Masking is “one of the things that requires a very low price from us, but can bring a lot of good results,” Public Health Services head Dr. Sharon Alroy-Preis said on Wednesday.

Bennett rolled out the requirement to wear masks at the airport and in medical facilities, and then set a policy that if an average of 100 people are infected per day for a week, the obligation to wear a mask in all enclosed spaces will apply.

In the meantime, Bennett only “recommended” that people wear masks in other closed spaces. On the other hand, he “instructed” government ministers and public leaders to wear masks – requiring them to adhere to a higher standard.

In the previous administration, officials often held to lower standards.

During the 2020 Passover Seders, when citizens were asked to celebrate the holiday in their own homes and with their nuclear families, Netanyahu invited his son for dinner, and Yoav Galant, Avigdor Liberman and Nir Barkat were all caught with their own violations, too.

Gila Gamliel was also caught breaking the rules on Yom Kippur.

The coronavirus cabinet resumed its activities on Wednesday with representation from all the sectors that are directly affected by COVID-19.

The cabinet includes not only Bennett, Gantz, Alternate Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid and Justice Minister Gideon Sa’ar, but also Horowitz, Public Security Minister Omer Bar Lev, Economy Minister Orna Barbivay, Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked, Education Minister Yifat Shasha-Biton, Construction and Housing Minister Ze’ev Elkin and Religious Services Minister Matan Kahana.

He also invited appropriate experts from the tourism and travel industries, as well as from the police and the medical field.

“No one suspects that he is acting for personal reasons,” one hospital head told the Post.

“He held good, open discussions aimed at arriving at founded decisions,” a health expert who was at Bennett’s Wednesday night meeting on COVID said. “He understands that it is important to suppress the current [outbreak] immediately, and wants to take proper action for that.

“So far, he looks OK to me,” the professional added. “Now, let’s see the implementation.”