A four-star visit during a pandemic
It’s not every day that the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff lands in Israel. It’s even rarer for such a visit to occur during a global pandemic, and even stranger when Israel seems to be the only stop on the trip.
US Army general and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley arrived on Friday at Nevatim Air Base in southern Israel and met with IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Aviv
July 2: “The Home Front Command and IDF officers and soldiers are our dear partners. But when I see the message on the need to transfer authority from the Health Ministry, in my lexicon that is not called helping carry the burden. It’s called politics at the expense of Israeli citizens.”
Netanyahu also seemed to have trouble letting go. In the first wave of coronavirus, he was prime minister of a caretaker government without a functioning Knesset. He was able to make sweeping decisions with little oversight. With all the frustration – which he shares with the health minister and others in the cabinet – over the Knesset overturning government policies, he would not want to hand the authority over enacting them to his political rival.
But that, of course, highlights the difficulties inherent to a unity government. For it to work, a unity government requires political rivals to put aside their differences and work together for the greater good. We’ve seen very few such occurrences in the 10 weeks since the government was sworn in.
Last week’s appointment of Ichilov Hospital director-general Prof. Ronni Gamzu as Israel’s coronavirus “czar” – or “project manager,” as he is known in Hebrew – to oversee the efforts to reduce the number of COVID-19 infections in Israel could have been one of those moments.
Instead, Netanyahu and Edelstein announced his appointment in the middle of the night without informing Gantz in advance, several hours after the major coalition blowup in the Knesset and subsequent doomsday predictions about the coalition’s impending implosion.
Still, just the fact that there is now someone to coordinate all the different parts of the government working on its coronavirus response, and it not being a political figure, demands some humility from the ministers, and that seems to have had an instant effect.
For Netanyahu to play up the IDF’s role as the first detail made public of Gamzu’s plans is a significant step, because he is willing to give Gantz a greater part in this effort.
And at the same time, the cabinet approved Netanyahu’s stimulus plan, which Blue and White opposed and held up for a week. Slight changes were made so that the wealthiest people will receive the extra funds and the neediest will get more, which were among Gantz’s demands.
Each side got a win. That does not mean things are perfect. The makeup of the new, smaller coronavirus cabinet instantly proved to be controversial. There are no women on the panel, and Education Minister Yoav Gallant was disappointed to find he is not on it, despite schools being a major factor in decisions. Housing and Construction Minister Ya’acov Litzman was furious to be excluded, as a former health minister and also a representative of the haredi (ultra-Orthodox) community that has been disproportionately impacted – though Interior Minister Arye Deri is haredi and on the committee.
At the same time, the committee sticks to the parity model on which the government was formed; the number of ministers who supported Netanyahu as prime minister is equal to those who backed Gantz.
Coalition Chairman Miki Zohar – not someone known to be conflict-averse – tried to reduce tensions on Friday, telling Netanyahu that he and Gantz have to be personally involved if they want the coalition to function.
And now, on Sunday, there