The chairman of the local government center and the mayor of Modi'in-Maccabim-Reut, Haim Bibbs, asked Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz to convene an urgent meeting, where a decision will be made to promote a new traffic light model.
Under the new model, the authorities will vote according to the number of vaccinated and recovering - and not according to the number of verified.
"The traffic light index is no longer a significant factor in stopping the infection," Bibbs said.
This proposal is shared by many of the heads of the authorities, who have previously demanded that a major part of the responsibility in the authorities - especially in decisions regarding education, business, etc. - be transferred to the local authorities themselves.
According to them, they know better how to deal with the epidemic in localities.
"We call on the government not to delay and urgently convene a meeting to adopt the new outline, so that we can make decisions based on relevant data and up-to-date outlines. Only then can we restore routine and sanity to residents," Bibbs wrote in his letter to the Interior Minister "I have the Ministries of Education, the Prime Minister, the Interior and more.
Chairman of the Local Government Haim Bibbs, Photo: Photographer Gideon Markovich
According to the proposed outline, a measure will be decided upon that will reflect the rate of immunization.
"We all need to mobilize to achieve the goal and concentrate the effort of the central government and local government alike to achieve it," Bibbs concludes.
Senior officials in the authorities explained that in fact the proposed plan will allow for facilitations where necessary and such control over what is done.
It should be noted that already in previous waves, in both governments, the heads of the authorities have appealed to governments to give them more powers.
Meanwhile, local authorities are dealing with the outbreak of the omicron, but are left without many tools for action.
A senior official in the Jerusalem municipality told Israel Today: "We did not have such a thing, that most of the verified are children.
Across Jerusalem, there are more than 350 classrooms in schools and kindergartens that are closed following the current corona wave.
The Ministry of Education's guidelines have room for interpretation, which has created a lot of gray space.
We want to return corona tests to schools as well to shorten closure ranges.
Corona trustees have been appointed to schools, so it is desirable and possible to conduct tests for teachers and students within schools.
We asked the Ministry of Education for this and we are waiting for their response. "
The municipality criticized the general guidelines for combating the eruption of the corona and sought to transfer the management of the fight against the plague to the authority: "It is much more correct to conduct the confrontation with the corona at the municipal level.
The mayor of Dimona and the deputy chairman of the local government, Bnei Bitton, also said: "Let us know, we will manage."
Mayor, Bnei Bitton, Photo: Photo Elul
In a conversation with Israel Today, Bitton talks about the magnitude of the crisis of trust: "I am in daily contact with the citizen. We are confused, yes we should vaccinate the children, we should not vaccinate the children, green class, no green class. We ask that our education system continue to operate." .
He added: "It is inconceivable that we are two years under the stretcher. You said a change government, this is the same lady in a change of coat. There is more confusion. I turn on the TV at midnight and watch and read instructions. Does that seem okay to you? We hear from the media that the education minister is in favor Or against vaccines - how can we expect citizens to do something? "
Bitton as mayor does not wait and just makes decisions: "There are closed classrooms and three kindergartens that I closed. I opened one of the kindergartens with three children who were not in kindergarten for ten days. This is my directive and I did not ask the Ministry of Education. I beg, Mr. Prime Minister Start giving explicit instructions - there is great confusion in the public. "
"Fighting yesterday's tool"
Avi Gruber, mayor of Ramat Hasharon, also said: "The virus is changing, the medical responses we know to give vary and only the traffic light model remains the same, and accordingly the guidelines are published. We are fighting today's war with yesterday's tools so there is confusion and a very partial response." .
In the Efrat local council, the situation is absurd: on the one hand, it is classified as a red authority with 96 verified, and its traffic light score is 7.9.
Queue outside the store due to the Corona regulations, archive, Photo: Michelle dot com
On the other hand, the color of her education traffic light is green.
The head of the council, Oded Ravibi, harshly criticized the government's conduct: "The central government gives too many guidelines, changes them frequently, some of its people do not meet their own guidelines, and all of this causes fatigue to become a mess.
"A few weeks ago, in a conversation with the prime minister, he told us that we were at war. I was taught that war is guided by two principles: flexibility and simplicity. Neither of these two principles has been in place in recent days."
The solution, in his view, is to allow local government to make operational decisions: what to close, where to study, conduct epidemiological investigations, initiate breadth tests and more: "Without the mobilization of local government the central government is doomed to failure, and it will cost us all health."
Efrat Forsher, Yuri Yalon, Yaron Doron, Ilya Yagurov and Shlomi Diaz participated in the preparation of the article.
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