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Israelis Suspect This Lockdown Isn’t About The Virus

(Bloomberg Opinion) -- On the day after Yom Kippur, three days after the government decreed a total shutdown of Israel, millions of citizens woke up prepared to break the law. This isn’t just a rejection of painful new restrictions on their freedom; it’s a vote of no-confidence in Benjamin Netanyahu.

The new lockdown decrees are clear and strict: Schools will be closed and non-essential businesses and factories shuttered. Citizens will be forbidden to congregate or to travel more than a kilometer from home. And, after this week, demonstrations will be curbed – a factor some consider the real motive behind the measures.

This is Israel’s second full shutdown. The first, in March, had real public buy-in, and it worked. The Prime Minister warned of dire consequences if the closing was not observed, and the public believed he knew what he was talking about. That belief was seemingly confirmed two months later, when the shutdown was lifted. At the time, Netanyahu declared victory and grandly invited Israelis to go out and have some fun.

Back then, Bibi was a hero. But the virus returned with a vengeance, and now Israel leads the developed world in per capita infections. Hospitals are nearing full capacity and entire sectors of the economy are in ruins. The latest polling shows that barely 25% of Israelis trust Netanyahu to deal with the disaster.

Netanyahu grudgingly concedes that the country was opened prematurely in the spring. But he has placed most of the blame on the alleged incompetence of others. His chief whipping boy is Professor Ronni Gamzu, whom he appointed “Corona Czar” two months ago.

Gamzu assessed the situation and saw that the most infected areas of the country were in the towns and neighborhoods of Israel’s Arabs and Ultra-Orthodox Jews. He proposed locking them down and allowing the rest of the country to observe basic health rules while going about its business.

The policy made public health sense, but the ultra-Orthodox community rebelled. They accused Gamzu of anti-Semitism and threatened to withdraw their political support from the prime minister. Without them, Netanyahu’s Likud party does not have a ruling majority. And so, it appears to many that he has sought to solve the problem by extending the shutdown to the entire country. The real sanctions are for the citizens of Tel Aviv, Haifa and other major cities, where the rate of infection is roughly one-third of that in the ultra-Orthodox towns and neighborhoods. It’s unlikely the new measures will even be enforced in ultra-Orthodox areas, where compliance with previous measures was also poor.

Gamzu opposed this one-size-fits-all approach, but his logic was brushed aside. He has announced that he will be leaving his post in November.

Many suspect that political self-preservation is one hidden motive for the draconian shutdown, but not the only one. Netanyahu is going on trial for three counts of criminal corruption in January. Crowds of demonstrators calling him “Crime Minister” and demanding his resignation have protested outside his residence in Jerusalem and his private villa in Caesarea; lately they have been spreading elsewhere too.

He has long searched for a way to shut down the protests. He doesn’t want to go to court in an inflamed atmosphere. But protesting is a foundational right in Israel. Even the present coronavirus law doesn’t apply to demonstrations.

Netanyahu has flirted with just declaring the demonstrations a public health menace and shutting them down, but that would be self-defeating. When the Supreme Court ruled that Netanyahu can continue to serve as prime minister even under indictment, it stipulated that he must not abuse the power of his office. The Court would likely take a dim view of measures to unilaterally end protected demonstrations against himself.

The only way he can get away with ending the protests is to include a ban or restriction within the framework of a general shutdown. That requires a vote of the Knesset, where he has a majority, which should happen sometime this week.

In the short run, this may ease Netanyahu’s political and personal problems. But it comes at the cost of his credibility and will likely not go unchallenged. Anti-Bibi demonstrators will publicly flaunt the law and force confrontations with the police. Meanwhile, most expect that the ultra-Orthodox will illegally open their schools and synagogues with the tacit permission of the authorities.

If that happens, everyday Israelis will pick and choose which restrictions they want to follow. Laws will become suggestions, penalties dodged and fines go unpaid. That is what happens when folks wake up in the midst of a pandemic to the grim reality that their once trusted leader has put his own personal and political interest above theirs.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Zev Chafets is a journalist and author of 14 books. He was a senior aide to Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and the founding managing editor of the Jerusalem Report Magazine.

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