“Whoever opens a Talmud Torah [religious elementary school]; whoever prays in a synagogue, a mosque or a church; whoever meets with a large number of people is putting the lives of others in danger,” he said.
“The law in Tel Aviv, Shfaram, Beitar Illit and Ashdod is the same law,” he added. “All should abide by the rules. If the law enforcement is not equal, there is no use continuing with the closure.”
While visiting the Alon Coronavirus Command Center at IDF Home Front Command headquarters near Ramle on Sunday, Gantz said he would reevaluate his position regarding the continuance of the current closure later this week.
“We will work this week on [the strategy for] getting out of the closure, on opening the green islands and opening the culture [world] with the green passport and on reopening businesses,” Gantz said.
“We will keep pushing for the education system to be the first to return to operation,” he said. “We should start talking immediately with teachers regarding giving back school days during the summer and the upcoming vacations. We should reward them, and in order to do so, we need to start the talks with them right now.”
Gantz stressed the importance of abiding by the closure rules together with the mass vaccination operation.
“The vaccines are not a goal; they are a means to return to a correct, healthy, day-to-day life,” he said. “What will determine [how quickly it will happen] will be the cooperation of the public and the discipline of each and every one of us in a way that will allow us to overcome this pandemic... We want to see the numbers [of new daily patients] going down and the number of vaccines going up.”
“We want to see the R [number] going down,” Gantz said, referring to the reproduction rate of how many people each infected person will infect. “Since we already entered a nationwide lockdown, we should exhaust this tool.”