Last week's signing ceremony on the south lawn of the White House, as Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain normalized relations, was the celebration Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wanted -- and the distraction he needed.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said "Let us pause for a moment to appreciate this remarkable day. Let us rise above any political divided. Let us put all cynicism aside. Let us feel on this day the pulse of history," last Tuesday.
"For long after the pandemic is gone, the peace we make today will endure." The normalization deals were the latest feathers in the cap of a leader who's been on a diplomatic winning streak lately.
Israel projects the image of a small but mighty country punching far above its weight on the global stage, an innovative "start-up nation" whose thousands of tech firms attract billions in foreign investment each year.
"We have a dysfunctional government good at producing ceremonies in the White House, bad at running a country," said opposition leader Yair Lapid.
"This is the worst failure Netanyahu ever experienced and we are experiencing it with him ... or because of him." At home, weekly protests have swelled outside the Prime Minister's residence in Jerusalem, where thousands of people have come out and called Israel's longest-serving leader to resign. The angry crowd, undeterred by a steady barrage of attacks from Netanyahu's political allies, hold signs that read "Prime Minister" and Bibi Go Home.
" This past weekend, in the first protest since Israel reimposed were arrested, police said. This government, specifically designed to handle the coronavirus crisis, was officially sworn in on May 17.
On that day, Israel recorded just 11 new cases of Covid-19, according to the Ministry of health data. there were 44 patients on ventilators and 3,403 active cases across the country, out of a total of 16,617 cases.
At the time, critics quipped that the government could put a government minister next to each patient on a ventilator.
Four months later, Israel's unity government has abjectly failed in its self- declared primary mission. As of Wednesday morning, there were 54,322 active cases in Israel out of a total of 200,041 cases since the beginning of the pandemic.
"Israelis are extremely pessimistic as a result of the corona crisis, and the perceived mismanagement of the economic and health aspects of the crisis," said Yohanan Plesner, President of the Israel Democracy Institute (IDI).
A former politician, Plesner said he's never seen anything like the problems within this current government. A recent survey from the IDI showed that Israelis overwhelmingly support the United normalization agreement with the United Arab Emirates, but that hasn't translated into a sense of trust in government or confidence about the future of the country.
Approximately two-thirds of Israelis believe the national mood is either moderately pessimistic or very pessimistic, according to the survey results, conduct by the Midgam Institute and prepared by the Guttman Center for Public opinion and Policy Research.
And yet Netanyahu displayed his brash brand of confidence last Thursday when he tried to assure Israeli citizens that they're in good hands. " The main thing I am telling you is that health and the economy are in our hands.
This is thr time for responsibility -- personal responsibility and mutual guarantee. We will defeat the coronavirus but only together will we do so," Netanyahu said. Netanyahu boasted about making peace with two Arab nations in 29 days, from August 13th to September 11th. During that same time period, approximately 62,000 thousand Israelis were diagnosed with Covid-19, while 446 citizens died of the disease.
But when Prime Minister was asked last week who should shoulder the blame for the failure to contain the virus, he responded, "There are no failures, only achievements.
" If Isreal's public health policy is under fire, its economic policy-making is even more sclerotic. The last nation budget was passed in 2018, and Netanyahu and Gantz were unable to reach an agreement on a new one last month, so they decided simply postpone for a few months in the interests of keeping the government afloat.
The head of the budget division in the Ministry of Finance quit his job, joining his counterpart at the Ministry of Health's public health division, who walked out a few months earlier.
And yet from the lofty position of Israel's Prime Minister, none of the above counts as the number one problem. Netanyahu's biggest issue is the fact he has been charged with bribery and fraud and breach of trust.
He continues to maintain his innocence, attacking the attorney general, investigators, and the judicial system, accusing them of an attempted coup driven by the left-wing and the media.
His trial begins in the earnest in January, when a panel of judges will begin hearing from witnesses. it is hard to imagine a White House ceremony big enough to draw attention away from those criminal proceedings
Source- CNN
