I just left Betar Illit after two hours in the municipal police station, with members of the National Security Council, the Home Front Command, IDF Central Command, and the Municipality. Residents there have been under closure for several days.
There are a lot of people of good will there who work hard and it's important for me to encourage them, but still the city leadership and residents have a feeling of massive chaos. As if they closed them in, locked them up, and threw the key into the sea as a kind of punishment, with threats that the "punishment" would be aggravated if there was no obedience to the closure while morbidity would increase.
Of course, this is far from the truth and there is probably a big gap here in communicating the reality to the residents and to the city's leadership.
Here are some of my initial insights on how to improve the situation:
The process won't succeed without an explanation that the people of the city can identify with - from the rabbinical and political leadership to the last of the residents. As I wrote Thursday about the general public, civic obedience is built through empathy and understanding rather than draconian enforcement that only produces frustration and contrary feelings. This is doubly true when closures are aimed at a specific population that feels unjustly persecuted.
It must be an explanation in the language, means, and ways of communication that get through to the local population.
The explanation should include an understanding of the severity of the disease (unlike the first wave, the feeling this time is that it's not terrible. There aren't that many critical and ventilated patients, and certainly not dead), an understanding of the rationale of isolation - what is its justification (full transparency of data!). What every component is supposed to achieve and how each restriction imposed under the close-down serves that purpose.
What efforts is the government making for its part - fast test results, closing a quick cycle of epidemiological investigations (otherwise it is a never-ending cycle), quickly sending carriers to hotels designated for the haredi population (including solutions for families with small children). Infrastructure for civilian support for the city's population for the closure period. And no less important - an economic response to compensate residents who can't make a living during this period. Anyone who needs to feed ten children and doesn't know how he's going to do it won't cooperate with anything. It's not a matter of someone separate who "isn't our responsibility" as I've often heard from those responsible for enforcing the closure itself. This must be part of the complete response that government representatives need to present to residents to gain their trust and cooperation. This is called inclusive and not fragmented vision.
The Knesset must have representatives from the Finance Ministry, Social Security, and the Employment Service who will train volunteers from the city to staff a center that will explain to people their rights, guide them in submitting applications, etc., and reassure them.
At the moment the municipal leadership isn't connected to the process, and rightly so. They feel the government forced, and is still forcing upon them something they don't understand or agree with. So they function through the period like someone who is being forced into it and isn't interested in its success. The leadership enjoys the trust of the residents and isn't willing to damage that trust and mediate for them an incident that they don't understand and don't believe in anyway.
We must sit with city rabbis and communities, to whom physicians will explain the severity of the phenomenon and the necessity of the steps taken in its framework. The Municipality must be a key partner in decision making so that it can implement them wholeheartedly and communicate them to the public to gain their cooperation. It just won't work any other way.
With the cooperation of the residents, it will be possible to finish such an event relatively quickly. Without cooperation this will get worse, and in the current situation it's difficult to expect the cooperation of the population.
Only when the local leadership is a true partner, when there's a clear rationale and the sense that the government is doing everything that's needed, can it be possible to build public sympathy and harness the public for this national effort.
I call on the Prime Minister to sit down tonight with the haredi ministers and MKs, connect them to the process, explain to them the reasoning with full transparency and make sure they identify with it and explain it to their public. If they aren't convinced it won't work. If they don't understand and attack government steps themselves, how can we expect their public to trust and cooperate? At the same time, we must sit down again with the rabbinical leadership of the haredi public at the national level, explain to them, get their support, and mobilize them for the information effort.
In order for them to agree to be mobilized, they must know there's a comprehensive medical and economic solution, that the government is doing everything in its power and that mobilization and public price are "worth it", and that together it will be possible to overcome the coronavirus and return to normal life also in the Red Zones.
The thought that a forced closure can be imposed and enforced through the police is unfounded and will only lead to more and more confrontations and unpleasant sights as we've seen in recent days.
As I wrote to the Prime Minister on Friday, I'm ready to take on the task of communicating the incident to the haredi public. If there's someone better and more suitable than I am, it of course would be great, but if no one is willing to take it on I'm willing.