The writing was on the wall. The government had over a month to discuss and decide what the first stage of eased coronavirus restrictions would entail, but no such discussion took place. Only at 2 a.m. between Saturday and Sunday, hours before the regulations were due to expire, did the cabinet convene for a conference call to approve new instructions that were announced the next morning – without any leeway to plan the latest changes to our lives.
Prime Minister Netanyahu deserves praise for two decisions he made, thanks to which Israel is in comparatively good shape as far as coronavirus goes: he stopped incoming flights at an early stage, and he instituted a social distancing lockdown.
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But now that we find ourselves needing to ease the closure, the problems in how the crisis was managed and how decisions were made are being thrown into stark relief. These problems engender the most crucial element without which we cannot make it through the crisis: the public's faith in the government and its cooperation with the strict rules that the situation demands.
The late-night cabinet meeting on Saturday illustrated the problem: Netanyahu, along with top health and Treasury officials, had already decided on the measures, so the ministers found themselves battling to make changes retroactively, as Netanyahu explained that there was no time for talk because the mandate of the previous regulations would run out in the morning. The meeting was more of the same of the previous cabinet meeting to discuss easing the lockdown, which was held on Thursday.
All the ministers and key officials were there. At the end of the meeting, which lasted about seven hours, one of the participants told me, "It was like a club." Another high-ranking official said, "Even now I can't understand what was decided."
This is only a symptom of something bigger. Thus far, the Israeli public has not been presented with any exit plan for the lockdown that details a gradual process that will free up the economy and the school system, or the conditions under which additional restrictions will be removed. Here, Israel is not doing well. In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel informed the public last week what the first and second exit stages from the country's lockdown would look like, with some of the nation's students returning to school in Stage 2. In the US last week, President Trump rolled out a three-phase plan for return to normal.
Presenting a plan to the public isn't merely a formality. In a situation in which people have been shaken up – economically, personally, and as families – the ability to ensure that the public follows instructions depends above all else on the citizens understanding the plan for what comes next, the reasoning behind it, and the criteria that will decide if more restrictions are removed.
In the meetings with the prime minister on Thursday, at least three possible sets of criteria for making these decisions were proposed: the number of new cases, the condition of patients on ventilators, or categorizing the population by risk group. But the meeting ended without any decision, and the late-night conference call on Saturday didn't even address criteria. As of Sunday, the Israeli public did not know what would determine if the lockdown would be eased or once again tightened in the event of a new corona outbreak.
Without announcing a clear plan, citizens might lose their faith in the decision-makers, as well as their willingness to obey the oppressive restrictions. They might start following their own rules. Without collective discipline, we will not be capable of controlling and eventually defeating the corona epidemic.
