Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon held a joint news conference Monday to reveal more emergency restrictions and a broad-range financial stimulus plan aimed at relieving the Israeli economy that has taken a battering under the COVID-19 coronavirus lockdown.
The Cabinet was expected to vote on both in a telephone meeting later Monday night.
The prime minister gave the bad news first, asking Israelis to hold the Passover seder alone as a nuclear family. No visits to other family members ahead of the holiday. No more minyanim, even in open spaces, even two meters apart.
Couples getting married are to celebrate with nuclear families, period. Funeral gatherings max out at 20 people. Circumcision ceremonies top out at 10 people, maximum.
Both must comply with Health Ministry guidelines, taking place in open spaces and with two meters (six feet “plus”) between each person.
“These restrictions save lives. We are helping you,” he said.
Neighborhoods where residents choose not to follow the Health Ministry guidelines — “particular groups,” the prime minister said, who are “deliberately breaching and even showing contempt” for the restrictions, will be faced with a full quarantine. It was a clear reference to neighborhoods in Jerusalem, Bnei Brak and other sites where strictly Orthodox young men have been ignoring the guidelines and gathering in defiance of the restrictions.
Multiple fines were handed out by police in Mea Shearim earlier in the day for violating the “100-meter” restriction; in addition, a Magen David Adom ambulance was attacked in a rock-throwing incident in the neighborhood as medics attempted to go to a private home to carry out COVID-19 coronavirus testing for one of the local residents.
The prime minister pointed out that most people are acting responsibly, including the strictly Orthodox population, but said those in the “extremist groups” who are defying the rules are endangering themselves and everyone else.
Netanyahu added another restriction as well: “There will not be any gathering of more than two people who are not from the same nuclear family.”
He added that the Israeli workforce is going to be further reduced, with businesses now operating at 30 percent of their staffs being told to slash that number by 50 percent.
The good news is, the government approved a NIS 80 billion economic aid package due to the COVID-19 crisis.
(Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon was given the task of providing the details on the economic stimulus package, but most of those were delivered at high speed and were incomprehensible.)
In addition to businesses being told to slash their workforce to a total 15 percent, they also are being told that they can retain 30 percent of their workers — but only if their are essential to the ongoing operation of their workplace.
According to Channel 12 News, the recovery plan includes financial assistance to business owners and those who are self-employed, through compensation funds, cancellation of arnona (property tax) for three months, and assistance with electricity and water bills.
Financial aid will be provided in the form of two grants — each to be NIS 6,000 — one provided before Passover and the other provided next month. According to officials at the Finance Ministry who spoke with Channel 12, the percentage of the NIS 6,000 state grants will be provided on the basis of the income of the self-employed individual.
“We don’t know what the next day will bring,” Netanyahu said before he relinquished the podium, “but, God willing, we will beat the coronavirus.”