Israel grapples with third dose dilemma

As the number of new cases of Covid spike in Israel’s fourth wave of the pandemic, Mr Bennett and his cabinet are facing a challenge which is as political as it is medical.

Israel’s successful roll-out of the vaccine that began in December has blunted the effect of the Delta variant. While the daily number of new cases passed the 2,000-mark this week, the proportion of serious cases remains relatively low. Most of these are treated quickly and the death toll has barely risen.

But the Delta wave has also exposed the chinks in the vaccine armour.

Even a country like Israel, which led the world for months in the proportion of population vaccinated, will still have enough non-vaccinated people to act as a vector for infection when a more dangerous variant, like Delta, comes along. It’s not just the minority of refusers but children, who will soon have to go back to school. And then there’s the question of how fast the effects of the vaccine wane. The data so far is incomplete and inconclusive, but there does seem to be some weakening over time, especially with older people who received their vaccines half-a-year ago.

Does this mean that a third “booster” jab of the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine that Israel has been using will help fight the Delta variant? Perhaps. There’s no way for saying for sure. Since Israel is currently the only country facing this dilemma, there won’t be enough data any time soon to answer the question more authoritatively.

But Mr Bennett is under pressure to come up with something — and fast. Especially as his predecessor has embarked on a campaign urging the new government to start administering third doses immediately, lest they squander the gains of his government in the initial vaccine roll-out.

However, that is precisely the risk if the third dose is not seen to help against the new variant. For now, the overwhelming majority of Israelis trust in the vaccines. A pointless third jab could erode that trust dramatically. Mr Bennett and his cabinet will have to decide soon, perhaps as early as this weekend.

The right decision, or just a lucky turn if the fourth wave starts dying down as it seems to be now in Britain, will bolster him for the next political confrontation that looms behind the Knesset recess in October: the battle for the budget.

This is going to be bruising – and not just because Mr Bennett has the smallest of majorities in the Knesset and Mr Netanyahu’s coalition will fight him every step of the way. It is also because first he has to fight his own coalition of eight separate parties.

Each party needs funding for the ministries it is in charge of to implement policies. Without that, what’s the point of having them? It will be a test of each party’s strength within the coalition to see who gets what. So far, Ra’am is assured of its funding for the mega-programme to improve infrastructure within the Arab sector and Benny Gantz has secured billions of shekels more for the defence budget to “confront Iran”.

With the Treasury demanding that at least part of the deficit from Covid is covered, it will be social programmes and subsidies which will probably take the biggest hit, along with an increase in taxation. This will be an unpopular budget with voters, but all the government needs at the moment is 61 MKs to vote for it. And if the budget (which will cover 2021 and 2022) passes, the coalition should have a much easier time and Mr Netanyahu’s hopes of toppling it any time soon will be well and truly dashed.

But there are months of wrangling still to go. It will help if the number of infections starts to go down.

Cyber diplomacy

A few months ago, a group of senior Israeli tech executives met with the heads of the defence ministry to discuss the possibility of Israel joining western governments in a new international agreement to regulate the export of cyber-hacking tools. They were concerned that burgeoning reports of the abuse of Israeli surveillance software by foreign governments, which have used it to hack the phones of journalists, human-rights activists and rival politicians, could damage Israel’s valuable tech sector.

“The consensus at the meeting was that such an agreement would not work, as it would essentially tie the hands of Israel and western countries in cyberwarfare, while our rivals in Russia, China and Iran would have free rein,” said one participant this week. It came after the revelations of the Pegasus Project, an international consortium of news organisations, blew the lid on the way 10 governments, customers of Israel’s NSO Group, had used its powerful hacking tool.

While both the Israeli government and NSO rushed to deny any knowledge of wrongdoing, behind the scenes both government officials and tech executives admitted that Pegasus should have been reined in earlier. “Neither the government nor the tech companies wanted to know how foreign regimes used the Israeli software we sold them,” said one defence official.

“It seemed like selling Pegasus to various governments Israel wanted to improve relations with was a diplomatic bonus,” admitted an executive who was involved in some of the NSO deals. “Now it looks like it may have caused more damage than benefit.”

One senior politician who may have been a target of Pegasus, used in his case by the Moroccan regime, is French President Emmanuel Macron. On Wednesday, Defence Minister Gantz flew to Paris to try to explain.

Coincidentally, during a meeting with his French counterpart, an oblique statement was released by his office saying that “representatives of several bodies visited the offices of NSO in order to assess the allegations raised in regard to the company.”

In other words, the Israeli government is spooked enough to want it to look like it’s doing something but not spooked enough to actually take concrete steps to increase scrutiny and impose new regulations on the tech sector.

That could change if the revelations in the media keep coming and pressure is brought on Israel from Western allies.

But there’s a more likely outcome.

Israel already imposes limits on its cyber exports — they can’t be used against countries with which Israel has “special relations”, the United States and Russia. France may prefer to receive the same kind of treatment rather than pressure Israel to adopt new standards across the board.

After all, the French, just like everyone else, are aware that countries have the opportunity to use anonymous Russian or Iranian hackers-for-hire who have no scruples and no addresses.

Better for them to continue to use Israeli software, just so long as they’re not the targets.