More than a week has passed since bars, restaurants, museums and theaters are open again in Israel, but entry is allowed only with, as they call it in Israel, a green passport, i.e. with a vaccination or covid passport - a document that is issued a week after other doses of the vaccine.
"Last week it was really cold. People without green passports couldn't get inside, and since you can't sit on the terrace for a long time - they quickly left," says the owner of a restaurant in Jerusalem, Omer Ido.
During the conversation with Omer, two moods were noticeable that now gripped all Israeli businessmen - joy that everything is returning to normal and anger at the losses caused by the decision of the Israeli authorities.
In many countries, the possible introduction of covid passports has been discussed for a long time, but for now Israel is the only one that has moved from words to actions.
China has recently introduced mandatory vaccination passports for international travel.
However, the Israeli experience concerns the internal life of the country, which is undoubtedly a more complex and extensive experiment.
How much has the life of Israelis changed, will the covid passport become a normal thing in the world and can Israel be a model by which the world will function after the pandemic?
Privileges for the vaccinated
At the end of February, in an interview with the American channel NBC, the CEO of Pfizer Albert Burla called Israel a global laboratory, taking into account the unprecedented scale of vaccination in the country, as well as the use of only Pfizer's vaccine.
According to him, Israel has become a kind of landmark against which we can talk about the impact of vaccination on the sphere of public health and the economy.
Israel is one of the first countries to immediately purchase millions of doses of the vaccine, and as of the end of December last year, more than half of the population has received at least one dose. Unlike other countries, vaccinated Israelis have a number of privileges.
Now the vaccinated Israeli can return to social and cultural life (tickets for theaters and museums are sold out), is not required to sit in quarantine after returning from a trip, and is freed from compliance with the rules of the contact tracing system of the infected.
This means that he does not have to be isolated if he has been in contact with a person who has been diagnosed with Covid-19.
A green passport is now required when visiting hotels, swimming pools, gyms and sports events. In order for children under the age of 16, who are not vaccinated for now, to be able to visit these places, they need to be tested for the corona virus.
At the same time, vaccination does not free people from wearing masks in public places and from respecting physical distance.
The fine for not wearing a mask for every citizen, without exception, is 1000 shekels ($300).
A Covid passport is not required to enter public transport and shopping centers.
How are things in Israel?
All over the country, since March 7, in places where table reservations are not mandatory, people have been waiting in long lines to sit in their favorite places.
"The four of us stood in line for about 40 minutes at the restaurant, but we turned around and went to a beach bar where you don't have to wait for a table and where you can sit right next to the water with a drink," says Ester from Eilat, a city in the very south of Israel, near the border with Egypt.
"There are lines everywhere, but not because of the green passports, you show them when entering from your phone and it takes a second. There are queues because people are crazy about the feeling of freedom, so it's not surprising that dinner in a restaurant comes as a reward for months of suffering," adds the girl.
Asaf is a Palestinian with Israeli citizenship.
He came to Jerusalem from his native Bilin, which is on the West Bank and where everything has been closed since mid-December, to visit his relatives and used his green passport to enter the bar.
"There is a warning here that it is mandatory to show the passport and that should be respected.
However, they do not check everywhere in the same way. I think it's up to the personal responsibility of the individual - to behave honestly," Asaf believes.
Without green passports, one can only sit in the gardens.
The question of the expediency of this division arises when a vaccinated client, who is sitting inside, meets in a common toilet with an unvaccinated one, who is sitting in the garden.
The authorities explain that the green passport is primarily a kind of security certificate that its owner does not pose a risk of infection. However, there is still no international scientific consensus on this issue, and that is exactly why the World Health Organization (WHO) does not recommend the introduction of covid passports.
In addition, according to the Israeli authorities, this division protects the vaccinated against new strains that the current vaccine may not be resistant to.
"I consider such restrictions to be balanced. This is not forever, but now we have to isolate the vaccinated and those who have recovered from the corona virus," said the former chief coordinator for the fight against the corona virus in Israel Roni Gamzo.
If he does not separate the vaccinated from the unvaccinated, the owner of the bar can pay a fine between five and ten thousand shekels ($1500-$3000).
However, according to the interviewees of the BBC, the degree of control over whether the measures are followed varies from place to place - from too strict checks to their absence.
Anyone who dares to forge a green passport faces criminal prosecution up to a prison sentence.
A chilling schism
Israeli anti-vaxxers are furious. Their campaign cannot be said to be large-scale, but eyewitnesses testify to the terrible scandals that took place at the doors of restaurants when they did not let in unvaccinated visitors.
"We do not trust this Government, nor the agreement with Pfizer, we do not know what is inside [the test tubes]. I have the feeling that we have become part of the biggest experiment in the history of mankind, believes 41-year-old Israeli journalist Arnon Maoz.
"This situation does not inspire confidence, our government is lying."
At the beginning of March, the anti-vaxxer organization Anshey Emet (People of Truth) filed a lawsuit against the Israeli authorities at the International Criminal Court.
The prosecutors state that the Israeli government is forcing the population to be vaccinated in every possible way and is thus committing, according to the Nuremberg Code, a crime against humanity, according to which Nazi criminals were tried for conducting medical experiments on living people.
Anti-vaxxers note that the green passport is only issued for six months. What after?
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made it clear on several occasions that he wants to prepare the country for the necessary vaccination twice in a year and a half.
"Nobody knows how long the immunity provided by vaccines lasts, but we reasonably believe that it will last even after July, and that is encouraging," says Professor Jonathan Halevi, director of the Shaarei Zedek Medical Center. According to his opinion, the next vaccination will not be before 2022.
In the background of such statements, anti-vaxxers add that the green passport is nothing more than an instrument by which they force people to get vaccinated because life without that document will be very difficult.
"In Israel, vaccination is not, nor will it be, mandatory. Whoever does not want to be vaccinated - has the right to do so. Also, there will be no sanctions against the unvaccinated.
It is important to understand that the vaccine is a huge privilege for all of us, which many countries have not yet received," Israeli Health Minister Julius Edelstein reassures his fellow citizens.
Nevertheless, there were attempts at forced vaccination in education, confirms teacher from Tel Aviv Natalija Zolotar.
"Let's say three weeks ago, we were told that unvaccinated teachers will not be allowed to come to work. Since then, the Ministry of Education has changed tactics to, let's call it, mild pressure. Now they are appealing to our civic duty with some videos and speeches," says Zolotar in an interview with the BBC's Russian service.
According to her, the school administration takes care of who has been vaccinated and who has not, but still, at least in her region, they are not thinking about canceling classes.
In other cities, different rules may apply because decisions are made at the municipal level.
"The plan is to offer teachers two options - a vaccine or a mandatory covid test every 72 hours. It is clear that the second option is extremely inconvenient, hardly anyone will choose it," says Zolotar.
Among the immigrants from Russia, there is a large group that is not against vaccination in principle, but is only willing to do so if they receive the Russian Sputnik V vaccine. Currently, only the Pfizer vaccine is available in Israel.
"Even at the very beginning of the vaccination, my mom said she wanted Sputnik V. She belongs to the 60+ group, she still hasn't been vaccinated, and our health insurance started writing to her every now and then. She is very loyal to Russia and, if we didn't live far from the center, she would go to vote," says Rima K, who lives in the south of Israel.
"My stepfather is waiting for the Russian vaccine. He read somewhere that there are some doses of Sputnik V in Israel and is now waiting for them to be offered to him. He will not vaccinate the American one - he considers the Russian one the most reliable and safest vaccine. He says that this is a way for the Americans to make money, while the Russians made the vaccine for the people," says Nika from Ramat-Gan.
Her family moved from Donetsk to Israel.
Proponents of vaccination are extremely aggressive towards anti-vaxxers who, in their opinion, are dragging the country backwards, and especially towards the conservative Jewish community, in which the majority did not even think of adhering to epidemiological measures during the pandemic.
Israeli social networks repeatedly talked about videos in which the police punished people who walked their dogs on the beach alone, without a mask, while on the other hand, they did nothing about mass gatherings in conservative Jewish neighborhoods.
Most Israelis believe that the conservatives are allowed to do anything because they represent an important part of Netanyahu's electorate.
However, even he will find it difficult to convince them to get vaccinated because only a small percentage of their community supports the vaccination campaign.
Most members of conservative communities do not even need green passports - they hardly go to restaurants and museums, and night clubs are a mental noun for them.
"On the one hand, we have political and electoral understandings, and on the other hand, we have the loss of control over the coronavirus. [...] And in fact we are getting another quarantine, that is, everyone is suffering because of non-compliance with the measures of a part of society", commented the leader of the party Israel is our house, Avigdor Lieberman to an Israeli newspaper News to the latest tightening of measures.
Israel: Conservative Jewish community against quarantine
Who's next?
From the very beginning of the pandemic, Israel set itself apart from other countries with its actions and decisions.
The first decided that the high holidays were a serious breeding ground for infection and introduced a quarantine during the main Jewish holiday of Passover in April last year.
Later, the whole world followed Israel's example - holiday restrictions were introduced everywhere, from Thanksgiving in the US to Christmas in Europe.
Israel was the first to re-introduce the quarantine in September last year, after which many other countries did the same.
It also became the only country not to allow entry to its own citizens when the situation, in the opinion of the authorities, began to get seriously out of control. Ben Gurion International Airport was under lock and key for more than a month - from February 1 to March 6.
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Another in a series of Israeli newspapers not only caused objections among a certain group of the population, but also serious doubts among international human rights fighters.
What about people who cannot be vaccinated due to health problems? Are covid passports fueling social divisions? Is revealing medical history a violation of medical confidentiality?
People's deputy of the Israeli Knesset, Tamar Zandberg, recently appealed that the ethical side of the fight against the corona virus should not be forgotten.
Parliament allowed municipal authorities access to information on unvaccinated residents in order to implement vaccination campaigns.
Zandberg said that the state has stepped down the slippery slope of meddling in the private lives of its citizens.
Also, following the announcement of the establishment of a covid passport system for travel within the European Union, several EU member states, as well as Great Britain, are still considering the idea of introducing vaccination passports within the country.
"I think that in the battle between ethics and expediency, business will still win", believes Israeli businessman Ofir Frisch.
"Technological giants, the international airline and tourism industry, in fact all those to which the markets react the most and whose steps the government follows, are in favor of introducing a control system as soon as possible, which can also include the covid passport".
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