Take two: Israel tests slow, cautious exit from lockdown to avoid another wave of coronavirus

Amir Zakaeim is standing guard outside his father's flower shop in central Jerusalem, where customers are staring in puzzlement at the trolley of plants blocking the front door.

The family-run shop was recently allowed to reopen as Israel emerged from its second nationwide lockdown, but is only offering delivery and takeaway service.  “It’s impossible,” he admits. “This is the kind of shop where people love to get inside and see what they are buying. For now, they need to order on the phone and collect.”

When Israel emerged triumphant from its first lockdown last Spring, thousands flocked to the beach, booked haircuts and heaved a sigh of relief as their children returned to school.

Then the second wave arrived, unleashing a substantially higher death toll and thousands of new cases per day, forcing the country to impose another lockdown in the Autumn that is finally drawing to a close.

It means that this time around, Israel has adopted a far more cautious approach to lifting lockdown restrictions, having admitted that it reopened the economy too quickly after the first wave. The decision to reopen schools and allow weddings was at the time blamed for one of the worst second waves of coronavirus in the developed world.

This week, the government agreed to allow children in Grades 1-4 to return to primary schools from next Sunday, while some public-facing businesses, such as hairdressers, can also reopen their doors. As in many other countries, essential shops such as pharmacies and supermarkets have remained open throughout the year.  The slow, vigilant approach to leaving lockdown offers some clues as to what European countries can expect when their second wave of the disease begins to recede.

In contrast with Israel, which is beginning to reap the benefits of its second lockdown, Spain has declared a state of emergency while Italy has imposed a series of tough new restrictions and France saw a new record of more than 50,000 cases in a single day.  The new Israeli rules state that businesses which receive face-to-face customers, such as salons, must ensure that only one person is in the shop at a time, signalling a slow start for businesses that have been closed since September 18.

Eliran Ekster, a barber in Jerusalem, says he hopes to reopen on Sunday but has had to put his clients on a two-week waiting list.

For the past few weeks of the lockdown, he has been bombarded with requests for haircuts at customers’ homes, all of which he turned down as it would be a breach of the rules.

“It hasn’t been easy, but my hope is this time we will stay open for good,” he says. “My concern is it will take a very long time to go back to normal, maybe a year or even longer.”

The decision to partially reopen schools and salons did not come easily, with Israeli ministers clashing over the proposals during a six-hour cabinet meeting on Monday.

Yuli Edelstein, the Israeli health minister, warned “I won’t support opening commerce, we’re playing with fire here,” according to broadcaster Channel 12.

There are also reports of bitter tensions within the Israeli civil service, with some officials privately accusing the finance ministry of using coronavirus funding pots to prop up Benjamin Netanyahu’s fragile coalition government. Anonymous sources claimed in an interview with the Financial Times that the finance ministry was drawing on the special fund to “throw money at citizens,” instead of heeding the advice of top economists, as Mr Netanyahu prepares for future elections.

Israel Katz, the Israeli finance minister, responded in a statement that the department was “functioning well” during a “difficult period.”

Since the second lockdown was imposed, the daily infection rate in Israel has fallen sharply from a record 9,000 cases in late September to fewer than 2,000 cases over the past week.  The proportion of positive coronavirus tests has also dropped to just two per cent, following a record 15 per cent during the peak of the second wave.

As for the reopening of primary schools, some teachers say they have lost faith in the Israeli government after the triumph over the first wave quickly turned to panic as the second wave was unleashed.

“It’s not easy, what the government is trying to do, and I was trusting at first. But I think the government made a lot of mistakes,” said one 33-year-old teacher.

“We’re more than half a year into this thing and it would be good to at least have a plan.”

She added that it was almost impossible to enforce social distancing in large classes unless they are broken up into “pods” of small groups, as will be the case with returning pupils from Grade 1-4.

But the teacher pointed out that Israelis, who live under constant threat of terror attacks from its enemies in the region, were no stranger to hardship.

“Yes, we are in lockdown, but at least we are not being bombed,” she says, with a shrug.