The new measures assume that from Friday, in the midst of the Jewish holiday, all essential workers must remain at home after work. The only legal meetings will be outdoors and will come with a maximum of 20 other people, all of whom will have to have traveled no more than 1,000 meters from their homes.
“We have heard from experts that if we do not take swift and vigorous action, we will succeed on the edge of the abyss,” Netanyahu told his cabinet, which met overnight to discuss blocking restrictions after the number of new instances consistent with the day had increased to around 7,000.
But the intense haggling over the blockade in recent weeks has revealed how Israel’s reaction to the coronavirus has stagnated in its political and cultural wars.
The war pitted the sometimes ultra-Orthodox pro-Netanyahu who opposed the strong contingent of anti-Netanyahu protesters. Ultra-Orthodox leaders argued that they were allowed to pray unrestricted as long as protesters were allowed to demonstrate en masse, and protesters argued that the conditions were not comparable because the protests went outdoors and that the government sought to use the virus as an excuse to end the opposition.
Regulations announced Thursday ended protests and inner worship well, made an exception for Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, which begins at sunset on Sunday. Restrictions allow prayer installations in internal synagogues in Yom Kippur, but with limits on the number of worshippers.
The protests, which lured tens of thousands of protesters to the streets each week outside Netanyahu’s official jerusalem apartment, demand their resignation. Israelis for not saving him the highest rate of infections in the country.
Protesters and anarchists and spreaders of the virus have long been denounced, and until Thursday they were allowed to continue protesting an Israeli law that protects freedom of demonstration.
A developing chorus criticized mass protests, saying it is unfair to allow them to continue when there were already restrictions on network prayer, and that the discrepancy led to an erosion of public trust and non-compliance with other anti-virus guidelines.
The debate over protests and prayers summed up the division into Israeli society, said Gayil Talshir, political scientist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Protests form the core of the left-wing liberal electorate, while synagogues symbolize the national-religious vision of the Netanyahu countryside.
“This,” he said, “is the politicization of the coronavirus in Israel. “
Experts also questioned whether Netanyahu’s concessions would serve public health and some have pointed out that allowing Yom Kippur’s internal synagogues throughout the day would go against the goal of strict closure, as evidence suggests that the virus spreads much more smoothly indoors than outdoors.
As with the Rosh Hashaná festival last week, rabbis will have to organize the faithful into teams of 20 to 50, dressed in masks and separated by separators. The number and duration of equipment will be calculated based on local infection rates, the number of entries to the synagogue and the available area.
Ultra-Orthodox ministers had argued that for many Jews, praying outdoors in the Monday warmth of Yom Kippur would be unbearable, especially for those who practice 25-hour fasting. A publisher on an online ultra-Orthodox popular news page. warned this week that the closure of Yom Kippur’s synagogues would be “a declaration of war opposite God and His Torá. “
“Keeping synagogues open in Yom Kippur sends the message,” said Hagai Levine, professor of epidemiology and president of the Israeli Association of Public Health Physicians. “In some situations, there may be dozens of people in the synagogue for many hours. “
He said protests against Netanyahu had been a driving force behind the spread of contagion.
As in New York, overcrowding in Israel’s ultra-Orthodox communities has already proven to be fertile soil for greater transmission.
Some say that the new restrictions, which will demand a maximum economic price, were largely designed to stink of protests.
“The total link between protests and prayers is artificial, a turn of Netanyahu,” said Ofer Koch, 67, a protester and businessman who has spent much of the more than 3 months in a protest tent near the prime minister’s residence, spending even a few nights. on a thin bed on the sidewalk. ” Its sole purpose is to avoid protests. “
But Rabbi Yehoshua Pfeffer, who leads various systems for Orthodox communities in Israel, said his network had “taken up arms” over the hole between the barriers of network prayer meetings and mass demonstrations. “People wondered where justice is?
Netanyahu and his attorney general, Avichai Mandelblit, said, however, that the urgent desire to deal with the public fitness crisis surpassed even basic rights, adding the right to protest or conduct unlimited network prayers.
“The point of leadership is to make difficult decisions, mandatory decisions, important decisions,” Netanyahu said. “We don’t have the privilege of knowing that we may have simply prevented further mortality and didn’t. “
He called the accusation that he acted primarily to prevent the protests as “ridiculous. “
Mandelblit said Thursday that the maximum death rate legally justified restrictions on all gatherings, adding demonstrations and prayers.
Protests would possibly continue, within certain limits. Police decided that up to 2,000 protesters can also enter dominance around the prime minister’s residence, while maintaining a social distance and status in separate teams of 20 people. But under the new rules, only those who live within Can go 1,000 meters.
Since freedom of manifestation is enshrined in Israeli law, the restrictions announced Thursday require the Israeli Parliament to pass orders to restrict that freedom.
Some ultra-Orthodox Israelis had taken advantage of the freedom to demonstrate. After Rosh Hashaná, families known as ultra-Orthodox were filmed posing as protesters, dragging suitcases on personal buses marked as protest buses to circumvent traffic restrictions between cities and cross police checks. be fined.
And the motion of protest lost a lot of public after the media released a video of dozens of activists enjoying an outdoor meal the day before Rosh Hashaná in Jerusalem’s protest tent without social esttachment, ignoring the lock that had forced many other Israelis to eat alone. accumulated on Tel Aviv beach for an occasion that became a beach party.
The national debate has also generated differences within the protest movement. Black Flags, one of the protest teams, has preemptively suspended its participation in protests in central Jerusalem, saying it would restrict its presence to smaller local demonstrations on bridges and crossroads across the country.
Under the protest tent, Koch’s group, “Ein Matzav,” which more or less translates as “No way,” had planned a final showdown on Thursday night: a time when participants sat in chairs on the street, 2 meters from each other, and heard lectures on the failure of the government. Hundreds of other people showed up.
© 2020 New York Times News Service