Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is banking on voters crediting him for beating the pandemic. But many worry that the country’s reopening may be premature and politically driven.
JERUSALEM — Vaccinated Israelis are working out in gyms and dining in restaurants. By this weekend they will be partying at nightclubs and cheering at soccer matches by the thousands.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is taking credit for bringing Israel “back to life” and banking on the country’s giddy, post-pandemic mood of liberation to put him over the top in a close election on Tuesday.
But nothing is quite that simple in Israeli politics.
While most Israelis appreciate the government’s impressive, world-leading vaccination campaign, many worry that the grand social and economic reopening may prove premature and suspect that the timing is political.
Instead of public health professionals making transparent decisions about reopening, “decisions are made at the last minute, at night, by the cabinet,” complained Prof. Hagai Levine, an epidemiologist at the Hebrew University-Hadassah School of Public Health in Jerusalem. “The timing, right before the election, is intended to declare mission accomplished.”
The parliamentary election on Tuesday will be the country’s fourth in two years. For Mr. Netanyahu, who is on trial on corruption charges, his best chance of avoiding conviction lies in heading a new right-wing government, analysts say, and he has staked everything on his handling of the coronavirus crisis.
He takes personal credit for the vaccination campaign, which has seen about half the country’s 9 million people receive a second Pfizer shot, outpacing the rest of the world, and has declared victory over the virus.
“Israel is the world champion in vaccinations, the first country in the world to exit from the health corona and the economic corona,” he said at a pre-election conference this week.
He has presented himself as the only candidate who could have pulled off the deal with Pfizer to secure the early delivery of millions of vaccines, boasting of his personal appeals to Pfizer’s CEO, Albert Bourla, who, as a son of Holocaust survivors, had great affinity for Israel.
Mr. Netanyahu even posted a clip from South Park, the American animated sitcom, acknowledging Israel’s vaccination supremacy.
But experts said his claim that the virus was in the rearview mirror was overly optimistic.
Just months ago, Israel’s daily infection rates and death rates were among the worst in the world. By February, Israel was also leading the world in the number of lockdown days. About two million Israelis under 16 are so far unable to get vaccinated and about a million eligible citizens have so far chosen not to.
With much of the adult population now vaccinated, weekly infection rates have been dropping dramatically. But there are still more than a thousand new cases a day, an infection rate that, adjusted for population, remains higher than those of the United States, Canada, Britain, Germany, Spain and others.
Health officials approved the reopening of businesses and leisure activities. But they sharply criticized a High Court decision this week lifting the quotas on airport arrivals, in part to allow Israeli citizens abroad to get back and vote.
“The High Court is taking responsibility for the risk of mutations entering Israel,” Yoav Kish, the deputy health minister, wrote on Twitter. “Good luck to us all.”
Critics blame the government for having failed to establish a reliable system to enforce quarantine for people entering the country, and health experts warn that they could bring in dangerous variants of the virus that are more resistant to the vaccine.
The dizzying mix of health policy and electioneering has left many Israelis in a state of confusion, out celebrating but also fearing that the rapid reopening may be reckless.
“I believe after the elections things will close again,” said Eran Avishai, the part-owner of a popular Mediterranean restaurant in Jerusalem. “It’s political and not logical that I can open a restaurant while my son, who’s in 10th grade, can only go to school for a few hours twice a week. There are hidden agendas.”
But as a businessman, he added, “I thank Bibi every morning when I wake up,” referring to Mr. Netanyahu by his nickname.
The reopening did not lead to an immediate boost for Mr. Netanyahu’s conservative Likud party in pre-election opinion polls, suggesting that his claim of vanquishing the virus may not be enough to persuade those who voted against him in the last three elections to change their minds.
For at least two years, Israel has been stuck in political gridlock, roughly divided between pro- and anti-Netanyahu voters. A stalemate in the last three elections prevented either side from securing a majority in Parliament that would allow it to form a stable coalition government.
Mr. Netanyahu’s critics accuse him of having mismanaged the health crisis over much of the last year by putting politics and personal interests ahead of the public’s, for example by going easy on those members of the ultra-Orthodox community who flouted lockdown rules in order to maintain the loyalty of his ultra-Orthodox coalition allies.
“It’s a mixed bag,” said Gadi Wolfsfeld, a professor of political communication at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya. “On the one hand Netanyahu gets credit for bringing the vaccines quickly and making Israel the most vaccinated society. On the other hand, a lot of people are angry at the way the ultra-Orthodox got away with everything, and he is identified with that. And people are mad about the lockdowns.”
The hasty reopening was a “cynical strategy,” he said, because any resulting increase in infection would only become apparent after the election.
Even as many businesses have reopened, other storefronts across the country were displaying “For Sale” or “To Let” signs after the pandemic left them permanently shuttered.
Mr. Netanyahu’s political rivals have homed in on his failures in handling the pandemic, which has taken the lives of more than 6,000 Israelis.
“6,000 victims of the government’s failed management will not be coming ‘Back to Life,’” Yair Lapid, leader of the centrist opposition to Mr. Netanyahu, wrote on Twitter. “Israel needs a sane government.”
A rival from the right, Naftali Bennett, brought out a booklet late last year titled, “How to Beat an Epidemic,” suggesting that he could have done a better job. But it’s impossible to know if he would have fared better than Mr. Netanyahu.
“Even if his opponents’ criticism is very harsh, they don’t have the deeds to prove they could have done any better in combating the virus,” said Gayil Talshir, a political scientist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
For once, she said, Mr. Netanyahu was running a positive campaign largely based on his achievements, rather than a divisive one that pitted different segments of the population against each other.
The logistics of holding an election during a pandemic, however, could skew the projections. The Central Elections Committee has decided to place ballot boxes inside nursing homes, a measure that may increase voter turnout among the older population. There will also be polling stations at the airport.
There will be more ballot boxes than usual, as well as 50 mobile voting stations to reduce overcrowding. There will be special transportation and separate polling stations for people infected with the virus or in quarantine.
But Israel does not offer voting by mail or absentee voting except for diplomats or other officials serving abroad, and some people may still be anxious about coming out to vote.
Whether the vaccination campaign and the reopening of the economy can break Israel’s political impasse remains unclear.
“It is too soon to judge,” said Ayelet Frish, a strategic consultant, days before the election. The electorate and the politicians remained split, she said, between what she called the pro-Netanyahu “I brought the vaccines” camp and the anti-Netanyahu “Because of you we have 6,000 dead” camp.
So far, she said, “It’s a draw.”
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