Confidence-building measures are needed to fight coronavirus - analysis

What methods could the government use to effectively regain public confidence?

By HERB KEINON
PRIME MINISTER Benjamin Netanyahu and Alternate Prime Minister Benny Gantz – a table apart. (photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
PRIME MINISTER Benjamin Netanyahu and Alternate Prime Minister Benny Gantz – a table apart.
(photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
Remember the concept “confidence building measures?”
This was a phrase that was often bandied about during bouts of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations and generally referred to steps that Israel was expected to take to prove that it was serious about peace.
Today there are no Palestinian-Israeli negotiations to speak of. But confidence building measures (CBMs) are still called for. This time, however, what is needed is not CBMs toward the Palestinians, but rather CBMs from the government to the public to help it gain confidence and trust in its ability to manage the COVID-19 crisis that seems to have gotten out of control.
But CBMs are not only incumbent upon the government, but also upon the media and the public as well.
First the government.
Much has been written over the last few months about how one of the most important assets to have in dealing with a crisis of this proportion is public faith and confidence that – as bad as things are – the government understands what the country’s citizens are going through and is doing everything in its power to alleviate the situation.
The government, at least the emergency corona government sworn in on May 17, has not radiated that sense. If anything, it has radiated the opposite.
How? By agreeing to the establishment of a badly inflated government with 34 ministers, by not establishing an effective corona cabinet or appointing a corona czar, by constant political bickering that is highly unseemly during a time of war, and by having its attention diverted by other issues that at this time pale in comparison.
The government needs to regain public confidence. One way not to do that is by blindly throwing money at the issue. Netanyahu’s announcement that every citizen would get a corona stimulus check did not restore faith in the government, but rather detracted from it because it seemed as if this measure was decided upon not as a way to wisely provide financial assistance to the needy, but as a way to stem the rising tide of loud protests. It was seen as “election economics.”
Here are some more effective steps the government could take to regain public confidence.
Stop quibbling
The current Likud-Blue and White government was set up with the express purposes of fighting corona. The times demanded it.
Historically, as Amit Segal pointed out in a Yediot Ahronot column on Friday, Israel’s three previous unity governments served important purposes. In 1967 before the Six Day War, it gave the public a sense of unity in dealing with a common enemy; in 1984 it extracted Israel from deep financial woes and the Lebanon War; and in 2001 it made possible the eradication of the terror of the Second Intifada.
“The fourth unity government of Netanyahu and Gantz was set up for two objectives: to fight corona and to radiate to the public a sense that politics had moved aside. It failed miserably at both. Instead of painful decisions, we got paralysis. Instead of unity, unending hostility.”
The first government CBM needs to end the internal coalition squabbles so that the public does not hear the coalition creaking with every step it takes. Photos of Netanyahu and Gantz sitting at the same meeting with body language oozing a sense that they can‘t stand each other, as well as jabs each take at the other, add to the public’s lack of confidence.
Appoint a corona czar
On June 7 Health Minister Yuli Edelstein said he intended to appoint someone to oversee the government’s operational response to the pandemic. It seemed like a good idea: one person to oversee all aspects of the issue, from testing and tracing to closures and the imposition of regulations.
More than a month and a half later, and still no one has been appointed. Not because there is no one in the country able to do the job, but because of bureaucratic and political infighting, and a lack of agreement over the authority the new czar should have. Those types of arguments at a time when some 1,500 people are being diagnosed each day as carriers of the virus does not add to public confidence in the system.
Close down unnecessary ministries
If the government really wants to indicate to the public that it understands and empathizes with their plight, it should shutter some of the completely unnecessary ministries created to accommodate the emergency unity government.
The money saved by this move – though it will reach into the tens of millions of shekels – would be largely symbolic and won’t be the silver bullet needed to rescue the economy, but symbols matter, and this would send a powerful message that the government hears the public’s pain.
When the rotation government was first announced, a good part of the public was in favor. But much of this favor soured when it became clear the government would waste huge amounts of money on useless ministries even as unemployment soared over 20%.
If the government is looking at possible CBMs, it should close down the Intelligence Service Ministry, the Settlements Ministry, the Higher and Secondary Education Ministry, the Water Resources Ministry, the Community Strengthening and Advancement Ministry, the Jerusalem Affairs and Heritage Ministry, and the Minister for Civic Issues within the Defense Ministry.
Focus
With the average citizens’ lives consumed by the corona – their fears and insecurities triggered by the plague – this should be what the public sees the government working on… around the clock.
Not on annexation, not on establishing committees to investigate alleged conflicts of interests of Supreme Court judges, not on tax breaks for the prime minister. It is not a matter of not being able to chew gum and walk at the same time, but if the battle against corona is indeed a war – a justification used for many of the regulations restricting personal freedoms – then it should be waged like a war. During a war, the government deals with the war, and nearly everything else drops by the wayside.
But it is not only the government which needs to take corrective steps. The media and the public also need to act more responsibly.
While it is not the media’s responsibility to boost morale, and criticism is necessary if we are to get this fight right, that criticism needs to be responsible and reasonable.
It is impossible not to walk away from watching the news over the last four months without thinking that the government will be blasted for anything it does. In the beginning it was slammed for “draconian” measures, with the chorus in April in the media being that Israel “overreacted.”
So then Israel opened up, and the new chorus was that it opened up too fast. When the schools were closed the media focused on parents unable to work; when the schools opened the focus shifted to parents complaining that they had to send their kids to school. The government was blasted for closing wedding halls, and then blasted for opening them up again; for not providing stimulus payments, and then for providing them.
Along with pointing out the government’s shortcomings, the media needs to be responsible in showing a complex reality in which there is no magic wand.
And the public, too, must demonstrate responsibility. First, by following the basic rules of wearing a mask, keeping social distance, and personal hygiene. And second, by appreciating the magnitude of the situation and keeping its demands realistic.
Most agree that the current wave came about because Israel opened up too soon. But Israel opened up too soon because the public demanded it, a classic case of “be careful what you wish for,” and the government gave in. The government should not have caved, but the public as well should have been more responsible in its demands, realizing that we are facing a plague of epic proportions over which no one has complete control.