Kurz, who visited Israel with his Danish counterpart to discuss a trilateral vaccine pact, gave Netanyahu credit for shocking him into action at the start of the Covid-19 outbreak. After talks and a tour of a gym open to those vaccinated or recovered from Covid-19, Austria, Denmark and Israel announced an alliance to ensure long-term vaccine supplies.
“I will never forget the beginning of the year 2020, when we got a call and Bibi Netanyahu told me that this virus will be a huge threat to the whole world, to Europe, even if we don’t know it at the moment,” said Kurz. “You may have been the reason we acted quite early in Austria when the first wave hit us hard in the European Union.”
Netanyahu recognized early on in the pandemic that vaccines could save not only Israel but also its political future.
Netanyahu promoted himself for years as the man who turned Israel into a global tech powerhouse. Facing a fourth election in two years and an ongoing corruption case, the Prime Minister commends his track record of turning Israel from “Start-up Nation” to “Vaccination Nation”.
Netanyahu has made Israel’s approach to the pandemic, and especially its robust vaccination drive, personal: appeared on television addresses to the country almost every night in the first weeks of the pandemic, obsessively negotiating vaccine deals with drug companies and receiving the first doses in Tel Aviv. airport and get vaccinated on primetime TV.
As Israelis go to the polls on Tuesday, life is starting to feel normal again, with schools in session and restaurants reopening.
The question now is whether voters will attribute Netanyahu’s return to normalcy enough to overcome the political stalemate that has gripped the country for the past two years.
“In politics, you judge the leader by the outcome, how did the leader deal with the crisis and the outcome,” said Aviv Bushinsky, a former Netanyahu media adviser. In the case of the vaccine program, he added, “Israelis are very happy.”
A strong start toppled by peaks
The coronavirus pandemic took place alongside a political crisis in Israel. The first spike in infections occurred last March, just weeks after the country’s third election in a year and while Netanyahu was forming a coalition with his rival partner Benny Gantz.
As the Austrian Chancellor noted, Netanyahu took swift action to combat the outbreak by publicly warning of the dangers of the virus and effectively shutting down Israel before the country even recorded its first death.
Mobile booths set up on the street allowed for easily accessible Covid-19 tests. Some people with mild cases of the virus were sent to state-run isolation facilities, often converted hotels, to recover. Passover, one of the major Jewish holidays where families gather in large groups for a grand seder dinner, was essentially canceled after Israelis were banned from gathering or traveling in groups.
In May, after nearly a year and a half of political stalemate, Netanyahu finally had his coalition government, with an unprecedented number of ministers and delegates. And as the infection rates plummeted, the government began to return public life. Israel appeared to have ended the first round at the top. While countries like Italy had recorded tens of thousands of deaths in May, the death toll in Israel at the time was below 300.
But as people went back to restaurants and events like weddings, so did the virus.
In September, Israel had the world’s highest number of per capita new infections, and the country was embroiled in a political row over who was to blame.
Professor Eran Segal of Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science praised the government’s initial response, but told CNN the mistakes started after the initial lockdown. A reluctance on several counts to enforce targeted restrictions at the local level, especially in ultra-Orthodox and Arab neighborhoods, may have helped spread the virus further, Segal said.
“Probably for several reasons, I can imagine a lot of political reasons, we have not been able to limit spreads where they occurred,” said Segal.
Segal also criticized the government’s summer litmus test for lockdowns – 800 at the same time critically ill patients would cause a closure. Had Israel introduced lockdowns earlier, there would have been fewer deaths and a shorter overall lockdown period, he said.
The comment marked a strikingly different tone from President Reuven Rivlin’s just a few days later, when Israel’s head of state issued an open apology to the nation.
“I know that as a leadership we have not done enough to deserve your attention. You trusted us and we abandoned you, ”Rivlin said. “You, the citizens of Israel, deserve a safety net that the land gives you. Decision makers, ministries, policymakers have to work for you and only for you – to save lives, reduce infections, to save the economy. I understand the feeling. that none of these have been performed satisfactorily. ”
As the end of 2020 approached, with Israel facing a third wave of infections, the Israeli Knesset stopped efforts to approve a budget, leading to the dissolution of parliament and the impetus for this year’s election. Netanyahu’s critics, including his coalition partner Gantz, suspected that the prime minister never intended the current administration to last, and now the Israeli leader saw his political salvation coming.
Bringing Israel Back to Life
Early on, Netanyahu insisted that Israel be one of the first countries to receive Covid-19 vaccines, claiming he was in regular contact with the major pharmaceutical companies and their CEOs.
Although he signed an early deal with Moderna, it was the special deal with Pfizer – and its Jewish CEO Albert Bourla – that captured Israel’s position as a world leader. Israel paid a high price and got the vaccines quickly, and in return, it gives Pfizer access to data from Israel’s centralized health care system to study the vaccine’s effectiveness. Israel has not specified the exact price per person it paid for the Pfizer vaccine, but a parliamentary committee this week revealed that the country has already spent 2.6 billion shekels ($ 787 million) on “various vaccine deals” and expects spend a similar amount. amount for more in the future.
But Netanyahu is committed to taking ownership of the vaccine program and its success, making it a central part of his new positive and uplifting “back to life” campaign – a marked departure from previous elections, Bushinsky said.
“In recent years, the Netanyahu campaign has always leaned or used the fear campaign, that if Netanyahu isn’t there, the Iranians will develop the bomb, or Hamas will get stronger, or Hezbollah will attack,” Bushinsky said. “I think this is the first election that Netanyahu is participating in, that he’s using not the fear campaign but the hope campaign.”
Time and luck have also been on Netanyahu’s side. With the vaccination program kicking off in late December, Netanyahu had at least three months between the first injection and election day – enough time for the majority of the population to get vaccinated and get a taste of normalcy under the ‘green pass’ program. of the country. . https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/israel-vaccine-green-pass-wellness/index.html
“Some say Netanyahu, god has touched him, that he is rich in happiness,” Bushinsky said. “Imagine if the elections were a few months ago when most people were not vaccinated.”
Tzachi Hanegbi, a cabinet minister who has served alongside Netanyahu for decades, said he thinks the Israelis will reward Netanyahu for how he handled the virus.
“I truly believe that after the corona year, people were really exposed to the prime minister’s abilities to get Israel out of the Covid-19 with new expectations, vaccination everyone is entitled to and millions of Israelis are already corona-free. on the result, ”said Hanegbi.
Netanyahu, Hanegbi said, has an “inner sense that you are there because God sent you to save the people of Israel and lead them through troubled times.”
“I think this gives him the strength and support of the people. It’s called charisma.”
CNN’s Oren Lieberman contributed to this report.