Israel Seems to Have Blunted the Medical Effects of the Coronavirus, but Economic Costs Still Loom

For the past several weeks, the Jewish state has been among the countries taking the strictest measures to protect against the spread of CORVID-19. Coordinating this response is Moshe Bar Siman-Tov, the director general of the health ministry, who—unlike all of his predecessors—is not a physician but an economist who cut his teeth working for the finance ministry. Haviv Rettig Gur assesses Bar Siman-Tov’s performance thus far:

Israel’s early and vigorous response to the coronavirus outbreak was deemed extreme by many observers. It raised the hackles of Beijing, Seoul, and Rome as their nationals were suddenly, and sometimes without warning, turned back at the airport. Israel did more to limit travel from more countries, and did it faster, than any other nation on earth. By early March, as the scale of the threat grew and governments in Italy and the U.S. were coming under criticism for doing too little, some of the anger at Bar Siman-Tov’s quarantines and air-travel restrictions lessened.

“Barsi,” [as Bar Siman-Tov is known to friends and colleagues], led an aggressive effort to slow the virus’s penetration into Israel—not because he thought he could stop it, but because slowing its spread would prevent overtaxing Israel’s hospitals and health infrastructures. The thinking was sound, health experts said. Israel has only so many respirators and lung specialists, making the death toll from the virus a function not of the number of people who fall ill but of the rate at which they do fall ill.

Slowing the spread could mean the difference between a few hundred dead by the end of the crisis and many thousands or even more who might succumb because hospitals could not treat them properly, and ventilators were in short supply.

Yet there is a price to such caution, even if it is one worth paying:

Several industries that depend on international travel and large gatherings of people—hotels, tour companies, private bus companies, event halls, airlines, conference organizing, caterers—are being devastated by the sudden disappearance of most of their business for the immediately foreseeable future. . . . [T]he virus, and Israel’s response to it, has already disrupted the country’s access to global supply chains, as a significant proportion of imports [would have] arrived in Israel on the now-canceled passenger flights. Suddenly lumber yards can’t get new lumber. Even many tech companies are now firing engineers because they can no longer acquire components for their products from abroad.

Read more at Times of Israel

More about: Coronavirus, Israeli economy, Israeli politics

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF