The Israeli government may reimpose some restrictions on public activity aimed at curbing the spread of the coronavirus, Israel’s coronavirus czar said Monday. Speaking with Radio 103FM Monday morning, Prof. Nachman Ash said that while the recent spate of COVID outbreaks – including a number of cases of the Indian variant of the coronavirus – Israel is not currently in the midst of a fourth wave of the pandemic. But, Ash continued, “if we see that the outbreaks continue, we will put the masks back on everywhere.” Ash called on parents to vaccinate children ages 12 to 15, as the Health Ministry gears up for a mass vaccination campaign for children in that age group. Ash also advised travelers with children to cancel non-essential trips abroad. On Sunday , Channel 13 and Kan reported that Health Ministry officials are already drafting a recommendation to the government to reimpose the mask mandate in schools, and that the Ministry is also considering calling on the government to restore the mask mandate in all public indoor areas. Education Minister Yifat Shasha-Biton (New Hope) slammed Health Ministry officials Sunday, accusing them of fomenting an atmosphere of panic. “Get serious,” Shasha-Biton, who formerly chaired the Knesset’s Coronavirus Committee, said during a government meeting Sunday. “I’ve been following the numbers since May, and the infection coefficient has always been around 1.” “We’re not in an emergency situation,” Shasha-Biton continued, expressing her opposition to the decision to renew an emergency law enabling the government to pass COVID-related laws without Knesset approval, giving the Knesset only the ability to retroactively nullify such laws.
Palestinian Authority (PA) chief negotiator Saeb Erekat on Monday condemned the meeting between Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Sudanese leader Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and called it a "stab in the back". "This meeting is a stab in the back of the Palestinian people... at a time when the administration of (US) President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu are trying to liquidate the Palestinian cause," said Erekat in a statement quoted by AFP . Netanyahu and the Sudanese leader met in Entebbe at the invitation of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni. During the meeting, it was agreed to start cooperation that will normalize relations between the two countries. The meeting follows the unveiling last week of the US administration’s peace plan, known as the “Deal of the Century”. PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas rejected the US peace plan outright, stating that the plan would be relegated to the "dustbin of history." On Saturday, the foreign ministers of the Arab League of which Sudan is a member rejected the peace plan during a summit in Cairo.