Naftali Bennett believes his ministry should take the lead on all matters ‘from A to Z’
Defense Minister Naftali Bennett is seeking to significantly alter the manner in which Israel is tackling the coronavirus outbreak, as health authorities on Sunday raised the confirmed number of cases in the country to more than 8,000.
At least 49 people have died from COVID-19 – the disease caused by the pathogen – with another 139 currently in critical condition.
Bennett last week unveiled a plan that envisions Israelis slowly returning to “reasonable routines” after the conclusion of the Passover holiday in 10 days’ time. He expressed optimism that “there [was] light at the end of the coronavirus tunnel,” while warning that the country’s economy could collapse unless a near-total nationwide lockdown was gradually lifted.
In Bennett’s estimation, the government should adopt key elements that have permitted some Asian countries to largely curb the contagion. This would entail a “focused and consistent effort to track carriers [of the virus] and isolate them; pinpoint treatment of [infected] cluster [zones] … and improving the capacity of the healthcare system to absorb thousands of patients.
“If we act immediately,” he contended, “Israel can reopen its economy in a supervised manner and return most workers to their jobs. This is the way in which we maintain a low-level spread until either a [vaccine] is [developed] or most of the Israeli public is infected, recovers and will be immune [to the illness].”
In a television interview Saturday night, Bennett went one step further, calling for the responsibility of managing the crisis – “from A to Z” – to be transferred to the Defense Ministry.
The position puts Bennett at odds with officials at the Health Ministry, including its director-general, who immediately dismissed the notion of restructuring Israel’s anti-coronavirus bureaucratic hierarchy. In a parliamentary briefing on Sunday, the Health Ministry’s second in command emphasized that “we have no intention or ability to reopen the economy” by April 15.
“Reconciling this divergence is not straightforward and simple, as it is obvious that self-isolation has curbed the spread of the virus,” Prof. Limor Aharonson-Daniel, head of the PREPARED Center for Emergency Response Research at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, told The Media Line. “But the debate over how to proceed also [centers] on the long-term toll on the economy and other matters including mental health. That is why ministries are looking for a way out of the present situation [in which most of the public is confined to home quarantine].”
“In Asia, technology has been very important for reintegration,” she continued. “When China started lifting restrictions, people were tightly surveilled and alerted if they approached carriers. Israel’s current tracking program has created a lot of pushback and there may have to be further compromises regarding personal privacy.”
To mitigate the infringement on civil liberties, Aharonson-Daniel believes that broader screening will enable authorities to identify less-impacted segments of the population that may then be allowed to resume various day-to-day activities. She nevertheless qualified that even these Israelis “will probably wear masks and gloves more frequently and not immediately congregate in groups. It will be some time before people travel abroad as much and large events like concerts are held,” she said.
“We may never go back to the way things were before – there will probably be a ‘new normal.’”
Specifically, Bennett has argued that his ministry is best suited to oversee the expansion of a national program to boost the rate of coronavirus testing from the current level of about 7,000 per day to 30,000. This may, in fact, become necessary given that the Health Ministry has temporarily been forced to narrow the criteria for those eligible for testing due to a reported shortage of associated chemical compounds.
Bennett has also raised the prospect of his ministry setting up drive-through test centers, as well as introducing an artificial intelligence-powered system that rates Israelis on a scale of 1 to 10 based on the likelihood of their becoming infected and then transmitting the disease.
For now, the Defense Ministry is closely coordinating with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), which has called up some 2,000 reservists to help police enforce guidelines severely restricting movement.
The military has assumed a significant role in maintaining a shutdown of Bnei Brak, a predominantly ultra-Orthodox neighborhood located east of Tel Aviv that has been especially hard hit. Meanwhile, the Prime Minister’s Office on Sunday announced that the Defense Ministry would begin overseeing operations at nursing homes, whose residents are at higher risk of contracting COVID-19.
Dozens of patients at these institutions have already been infected, resulting in at least 10 deaths.
Yaakov Lappin, a research associate at Bar-Ilan University’s Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, told The Media Line that Bennett is acting on the premise that South Korea’s “mass-testing model” is Israel’s fastest “exit strategy” from the crisis.
“Implementing this would require identifying carriers on a massive scale as well as virus hot spots. It would also involve evaluating big data – huge amounts of information at once – and Bennett thinks his department is best positioned to spearhead such an enormous logistical and analytical task within a limited timeframe,” Lappin said.
To achieve this, Bennett’s proposal includes additional mobilization of the IDF’s Home Front Command, which regularly coordinates with authorities in the civilian sphere, as well as the deployment of personnel from the military’s ground forces who have experience in disaster management.
“You can already see the Defense Ministry gradually increasing the scope of its involvement. Vehicles are doubling up as ambulances and caring for some 230,000 elderly people is now under Bennett’s purview,” Lappin said.
“Moreover, national defense companies have started teaming up with medial supply businesses in order to create personal protection equipment and related technologies.”
For example, Lappin highlighted a partnership between Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) and Inovytec.
“Together, they have been teaching IAI employees how to use missile and satellite production lines to manufacture ventilators. Rafael Advanced Defense Systems has joined the effort and dozens of ventilators have been produced in Israel. There will probably be thousands of them within a couple of months,” he said.
He also noted that IAI was cooperating with defense company Elbit in order to outfit hospitals, in particular, with sensitive radar technology capable of scanning people for symptoms of coronavirus.
Overall, Israel’s response to the pandemic has widely been hailed as a success. However, the relatively positive results could, by most accounts, be negated if the economy crumbled.
While all agree this potentiality must be avoided, there is seemingly a growing divide in Jerusalem over how to mitigate the financial impact of the outbreak without placing lives at risk.