This week, it was hard not to notice the frenzy that gripped Prime Minister Naftali Bennett the moment the extent of the Omicron contagion and the expected wave of morbidity became clear. As someone who bet the house on vaccination, the prime minister was forced to contend not only with public apathy but also – even mainly – with the indifference of several senior ministers.
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While he was calling a special press conference, at which he announced nothing and whose only purpose appears to have been to create drama that would spur the public toward the vaccination sites set up nationwide – his finance minister was comparing the Omicron variant to the flue, and the education minister who refused to allow vaccination on school premises was backed up by her party leader, and other senior minister went out of their way to praise her and express support for her decisions.
COVID is a main issue for Bennett. In effect, as the authorities of the prime minister are being chipped away and the ministers themselves make the main decisions, with the prime minister representing the minority position on nearly every issue he brings to his ministers for a vote, COVID remains the major – if not only – subject on which he can still make decisions and get results. As someone who, while still in the Opposition, made a show of knowing how to overcome the pandemic, Bennett was also very hesitant, but he is gearing up to fight this battle on his own, without the ministers who are supposed to support him. Some are actively trying to trip him up, while others have just disappeared.
This week, Bennett convened the Coronavirus cabinet for its first meeting in a long time. For the prime minister, this is an unnecessary and damaging institution. Everything said there is leaked, and it currently serves mostly as a place where ministers can take revenge on each other. Bennett prefers to work with the smaller forum he put together, which comprises only himself and another minister, depending on the issue at hand, and experts. If in the previous government, the Coronavirus cabinet was a prestigious forum that every minister fought to join, much like the Diplomatic Security Cabinet, today it's treated mostly like a nuisance. Foreign Minister Yair Lapid and Finance Minister Avigdor Lieberman even requested legislation that would exempt them from taking part in its meetings, and other ministers are simply uninterested. But Bennett couldn't not convene the cabinet after defining the current morbidity situation as an "emergency."
As of now, other than meetings and consultations, press conferences and announcements, no practical decision has been made that will preempt the Omicron wave, other than closing down air travel to and from most of the world. And it's not that Bennett doesn't want to – he simply can't.
His press conference this week sounded more like a series of tips than an announcement by a prime minister. Bennett warned, almost begged, anyone who watched it to go get vaccinated and vaccinate their children. He reminded viewers to wear masks and basically made the people of Israel responsible for what happened in the impending COVID wave. The prime minister's message, between the lines, was that the government can't help its citizens in the near future, and that from here on out, everyone is responsible for themselves and their families.
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