Alternate Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid opposed the application of the Green Pass in malls at the cabinet meeting, and Prime Minister Naftali Bennett ultimately agreed not to do so, Kan 11 News reported on Sunday.
A senior government official told Kan 11 News that Bennett could have overcome any other obstacle within the government, but Lapid's opposition to the move surprised him and caused him back down.
"The work with Minister Lapid is excellent," Bennett said at Sunday evening’s press conference on the spread of the Omicron variant of COVID-19. "True, things are messy, it's not easy, but the citizens of Israel enjoy much more serious and tight-knit leadership than most countries in the world."
On Friday, Bennett and the Cabinet ministers decided that what was described as a "tightened" purple pass will be applied in malls and closed commercial areas, based on an occupancy ratio of 1:15 - meaning one person will be allowed to enter the premises for every 15 square meters, instead of an occupancy ratio of 1:7 as had been the case until now.
The purple pass in the shopping centers will replace the green pass requirement, on which Bennett had insisted up until this point. At the same, it was decided that in accordance with the morbidity rates, the possibility of applying the green pass requirement to any commercial building larger than 100 square meters will be examined in the coming days.
The purple pass limits the number of people in any compound according to its size, meaning that a "tightened" purple pass would likely require a count of the number of people inside the mall at any given moment.