Quarantine policy for int’l arrivals illegal
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the Defense Ministry to quarantine all arrivals from abroad in hotels, starting Wednesday afternoon, but the policy turned out to be illegal.
In the immediate aftermath of the order, Defense Minister Naftali Bennett said it would be logistically impossible and very costly to fully implement the plan, and said only arrivals from New York, where there is a high level of coronavirus infections, would be sent to the
“Many people feel that the Israeli authorities are not doing enough to address the problem in the Arab sector,” Abu Mokh said. “We want to see more tests in the Arab community. People are panicking and are afraid that they won’t receive medical treatment once the disease spreads. We also want to see the leaders of the Arab citizens play a bigger role in preventing the spread of the disease.”
The highest number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the Arab sector was registered in the Lower Galilee city of Tamra, where 13 residents tested positive for coronavirus. Tamra has a population of nearly 35,000 people.
Tamra Mayor Suhail Diab said, however, that he was aware of only nine confirmed cases in his city. Most of the residents who tested positive for the virus recently returned from a trip to Turkey, while another young woman was diagnosed with the disease after visiting Britain, Diad said. In addition, a nurse from Tamra has also tested positive for the virus.
In Nazareth, seven residents have tested positive for the disease. Another six residents of Taiba, in the Triangle area, contracted the virus, as well as another five in Umm el-Fahm.
The tests showed that the disease has also spread to the Bedouin city of Rahat, where six residents tested positive for coronavirus.
The mobile clinics have so far enabled hundreds of Arab-Israelis to be tested, and the number of infected residents is expected to increase when the results come out.
“I understand the fears of many Arab citizens, but the situation in the Arab sector so far seems to be under control,” said Haitham Shehadeh, a pediatrician from Haifa. “Today there’s more awareness of the dangers of the disease, and most people are abiding by the Ministry of Health regulations to curb the spread of coronavirus.”
Thousands of Arab-Israelis from the Galilee, Triangle area and the Negev have been in self-imposed isolation and quarantine since the outbreak of the disease in early March.
The mobile clinics are expected to conduct more tests in the coming week in Rahat, Taiba, Kafr Kassem, Nazareth and other Arab villages and cities, according to a special medical committee set up by the Joint List to follow up on the developments surrounding the outbreak of the virus in the Arab sector.
MK Heba Yazbak of the Joint List expressed satisfaction that the test clinics were finally operating in the Arab sector after recurring appeals from the leaders of the Arab-Israelis.
“It’s time for the Arab citizens to receive equal medical services,” she said.
THE MAJOR communities today of the Eda are the Toldos Aharon and Toldos Avraham Yitzhak hassidic groups and the Dushinsky, Munkatch and Satmar hassidic communities, as well as a faction of the Breslov hassidic group, the Prushim and other smaller communities.
Most live in Jerusalem, particularly in Mea Shearim and surrounding neighborhoods, as well as Beit Shemesh.
The Eda communities do not take instructions from the senior rabbinic leadership of the mainstream ultra-Orthodox world, but instead comply with the rulings of the Eda’s own rabbinical court, headed by Rabbi Yitzhak Tuvia Weiss and Rabbi Moshe Shternbuch.
According to Professor Benjamin Brown, a lecturer at Hebrew University and a research fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute, the communities of the Eda saw the Zionist enterprise from the outset as a project designed to secularize the Jewish settlement in the Land of Israel.
They sought to isolate themselves from the Zionists and create their own enclaves where they could continue to practice their brand of ultraconservative, isolationist Judaism.
The Eda’s communities also