With the coalition divided over an increasing number of issues, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has announced that the “fifth wave of COVID” is already here. The data tell a different story.
On Sunday afternoon, an announcement reminiscent of the Netanyahu days was sent to journalists: “Prime Minister Naftali Bennett will be holding a press conference at eight o’clock this evening.” Eight in the evening was Bibi’s favorite time for such events, because that’s when the evening news begins on television, garnering many viewers. Initially, Netanyahu only held an eight o’clock press conference when he had something dramatic to convey—such as when he announced that Israel had succeeded in obtaining a cache of nuclear documents from Iran. But in the last year and a half of his term in office, Bibi used the same trick over and over, with press conferences mostly focusing on the coronavirus epidemic, first delivering warnings, later moving on to announcements of new regulations, and later still, using the occasions as public relations events at which he proudly announced the vaccine doses that were shortly to be arriving in Israel. To Bennett’s credit, he has barely used this tool, but this week, he did, with content that sounded like something from the Bibi era.
“The fifth wave has begun,” Bennett said, with a worried expression on his face. He justified his decision to close the skies of Israel to foreign nationals and to apply stricter quarantine regulations to Israeli citizens returning from abroad, saying, “These decisions bought us precious time. There were those who say, ‘He’s getting hysterical,’ but I wish to thank those of my colleagues who support me. The time we bought is running out. The omicron variant is here in the country, from the Knesset to the kindergarten.” He asked the public to limit contacts with others and to refrain from gatherings, but he stopped at imposing actual restrictions, even though it sounded like they were on the way.
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