Israel has imposed the second nation wide lockdown for three weeks as covid-19 cases surges in country on Sunday, Netanyahu said in
a press conference.
Thousands of Israelis protested against Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem on Saturday over his purported corruption and how government is handling the global pandemic.
Protestors gathered outside the residence of Netanyahu, blowing whistles, waving flags and calling for his resignation. Small protests were held on bridges at major points of the city across Israel.
10,000 people attended the weekly demonstration in Jerusalem.
Organiser said, later 25,000 people joined the protest. The protests are now in 12th week built up as the Covid-19 cases increased.
Some critics of the prime minister say he is preoccupied with his corruption trial on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trutst.
Netanyahu denied any wrongdoing and has also condemned the demonstrations against him, accusing protesters of trampling democracy.
A diplomatic breakthrough with the United Arab Emirates in August – followed by Bahrain on Friday – has largely been welcomed by Israelis, but has been overshadowed by the economic fears stirred by the coronavirus crisis.
After a media backlash, Netanyahu scrapped plans to travel on an executive jet with his family to Washington, DC on Sunday for a signing ceremony of the Israel-UAE accord, separately from an airliner chartered for the Israeli delegation.
The prime minister’s aides said the plans to travel separately had been a health precaution. But Netanyahu’s office said on Friday that he would travel with the rest of the delegation.
At the press conference Sunday announcing the lockdown, Netanyahu defended his response, saying Israel’s economy had emerged from the first lockdown in a better state than many other developed nations and that while cases were high, the country’s coronavirus mortality numbers were lower than other countries with similar outbreaks.