First, the Israeli government imposed a 14-day home quarantine on all returnees from Japan and South Korea. Subsequently, an entry ban was also imposed on all citizens of South Korea and on all travelers who had been in South Korea during the previous two weeks. On March 6, an order by the Minister of Interior went into effect at 8 a.m. banning travelers from Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Austria, and Switzerland from entering Israel unless they can prove they have a quarantine facility in a locked housing unit. The crossing at the Allenby Bridge from Jordan into the West Bank, controlled by Israeli authorities, was completely closed. On March 11, 2020, Israel banned events and gatherings of more than 100 people. Schools and universities were closed. Five days later, the number for gatherings was lowered to ten, with orders to keep at least two meters apart. On March 12, 2020, entry restrictions were extended to all travelers from abroad. Violators of ordered quarantines were threatened with prison terms of up to seven years. In addition, schools and universities were closed. On March 17, the Israeli Embassy Berlin was closed after Ambassador Jeremy Issacharoff tested positive for SARS-CoV-2. On March 18, orders were issued to close all hotels, kindergartens, stores, shopping malls, restaurants, entertainment venues such as amusement parks, theaters, cinemas or fitness centers. Grocery stores, banks, pharmacies and gas stations remained exempt. On public buses, the number of passengers was limited and payment with cash was prohibited. The announcement of these measures led to hoarding purchases among the population. Hotels with at least 200 beds and a maximum distance of 30 kilometers from a medical center are to be converted to accommodate patients with minor illnesses and operated by the Israel Defense Forces for an initial period of one month, with an option to extend for another month.
According to the Health Ministry's recommendation, since March 18, foreigners have been barred from entering Israel even if they can prove they have a home quarantine.
Over the course of the second half of March 2020, the railroad's passenger services were gradually suspended until they were discontinued altogether on March 25, 2020, following a government decision to that effect. From the end of April 2020, the resumption of traffic was then considered and postponed several times, most recently to June 1, 2020.
With a new decree, the domestic intelligence service Shin Bet received general permission to collect individual information of citizens. Shin Bet accessed people's cell phone and movement data and registered patients. The data were not anonymized. People who were identified as contacts of infected persons according to this data received a request to go into quarantine immediately.
On March 18, 2020, mass surveillance tools began to be deployed. 400 people who had been in contact with people infected with COVID-19 were informed by text message that they must go into quarantine. The mass surveillance aims to alert people who have been within two meters for 10 minutes or more of someone found to be infected with COVID-19 in the past two weeks. Self-quarantine lasts 14 days, so if the incident occurred 10 days earlier, self-quarantine must last four days. The electronic tracking program has been met with sharp criticism, including from government officials. Its legality has been challenged in the Supreme Court.
On March 19, the first shipment of 100,000 COVID-19 test kits arrived, apparently organized abroad by the Mossad intelligence service. Further, according to research by the New York Times, the service secured medical protective equipment and the technical knowledge to build respirators and to set up its own mask production facility. Two of the special missions had failed - in Germany, for example, officials stopped a shipment before Mossad could get it out of the factory, and another failed when Indian customs officials stopped a shipment of disinfectant.
On April 2, 2020, Bnei Berak, the town with the highest percentage of infected people, became the first Israeli town to be declared a restricted zone and sealed off by police. Of the approximately 200,000 mostly ultra-Orthodox residents, 7,030 had contracted COVID-19 by then.
Schools reopened in early May, beaches in mid-May, and bar and restaurant visits were possible again by the 22nd week. Moshe Bar-Simon-Tow, as director general of the Ministry of Health, again noted an increase in infection rates, over a longer period of time and in different parts of the country. Neither the heat waves nor the humidity had caused the disease to disappear. Consideration was given to closing some schools or grades, or to early summer vacations.
A second lockdown went into effect at 2 p.m. on Sept. 18, 2020. The mass of the population is not allowed to leave a radius of one kilometer around their home address, except for emergencies, work or shopping.
On November 12, 2020, it was announced that BioNTech/Pfizer's BNT162b2 vaccine against COVID-19 could likely be administered beginning in January 2021, following its approval by the FDA. A total of eight million doses will be delivered during 2021. After two vaccinations per person are needed, this would be enough to vaccinate four million Israelis (about 40% of the population). Israel had previously signed an agreement for the sale of a vaccine with the American pharmaceutical company Moderna.
In early 2021, Amnesty International demanded that Israel "stop ignoring its international obligations as an occupying power." Vaccines should also be "made available to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza." In response, Alan Posener made clear that Palestinians in Gaza were not living under Israeli occupation but under the administration of Hamas, and that 96 percent of Palestinians in the West Bank were controlled by the Palestinian Authority (PA) in Ramallah, which was also responsible for medical care. Posener highlighted that by the mid-2020s, according to the United Nations, there had been "strong Israeli-Palestinian cooperation" in this area, such as Israel training Palestinian medical personnel or laboratory technicians and planning a joint vaccination campaign. However, he said, PA chief Mahmoud Abbas cut off all cooperation with Israel out of anger over the Trump Middle East plan. Posener also objected to the claim that Israeli Arabs and Palestinians living in East Jerusalem receive less vaccine than Jewish Israelis. According to Posener, the lower vaccination rates are related to conspiracy theories circulating on Arabic-language social media that the vaccine used by Israel will kill Arabs or alter their DNA.
