Israel to Impose 3-Week Lockdown

A woman wearing a face mask to help fight the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) walks past shops in a market in Jerusalem's Old City July 6, 2020. (Reuters)
A woman wearing a face mask to help fight the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) walks past shops in a market in Jerusalem's Old City July 6, 2020. (Reuters)
TT
20

Israel to Impose 3-Week Lockdown

A woman wearing a face mask to help fight the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) walks past shops in a market in Jerusalem's Old City July 6, 2020. (Reuters)
A woman wearing a face mask to help fight the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) walks past shops in a market in Jerusalem's Old City July 6, 2020. (Reuters)

Israel will enter a three-week nationwide lockdown starting on Friday to contain the spread of the coronavirus after a second-wave surge of new cases, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday.

During the lockdown, which comes during the Jewish high-holiday season, Israelis will have to stay within 500 meters of their houses, but can travel to workplaces that will be allowed to operate on a limited basis.

Schools and shopping malls will be closed but supermarkets and pharmacies will remain open. The public sector will operate with fewer staff, but non-governmental offices and businesses will not have to close, as long as they do not accept customers.

"I know those measures will exact a heavy price on us all," Netanyahu said in a televised address. "This is not the kind of holiday we are used to. And we certainly won't be able to celebrate with our extended families."

Netanyahu, who has faced increasing criticism over his handling of the coronavirus crisis, said he instructed his finance minister to come up with a new economic package to assist businesses hurt by the lockdown.

An Israeli cabinet minister tendered his resignation on Sunday in protest at the lockdown.

"This wrongs and scorns hundreds of thousands of citizens,” Housing Minister Yaakov Litzman, who heads an ultra-Orthodox Jewish party in Netanyahu's conservative coalition, said in his resignation letter.

"Where were you until now? Why have the Jewish holidays become a convenient address for tackling the coronavirus...?"

Under law, Litzman's resignation takes effect in 48 hours.

Although a sign of strained relations between Netanyahu and his ultra-Orthodox political partners, Litzman's move was unlikely to have any immediate effect on the stability of the veteran leader's governing coalition.

Israel, which has a population of 9 million, has reported 153,217 coronavirus cases and 1,103 deaths. With new cases topping 3,000 daily in recent weeks, authorities worry that the health system could be overwhelmed.



Homeland Insecurity: Expelled Afghans Seek Swift Return to Pakistan

Afghan refugees atop trucks piled with their belongings cross the border from Pakistan to Afghanistan at Chaman in April. Abdul BASIT / AFP/File
Afghan refugees atop trucks piled with their belongings cross the border from Pakistan to Afghanistan at Chaman in April. Abdul BASIT / AFP/File
TT
20

Homeland Insecurity: Expelled Afghans Seek Swift Return to Pakistan

Afghan refugees atop trucks piled with their belongings cross the border from Pakistan to Afghanistan at Chaman in April. Abdul BASIT / AFP/File
Afghan refugees atop trucks piled with their belongings cross the border from Pakistan to Afghanistan at Chaman in April. Abdul BASIT / AFP/File

Pakistan says it has expelled more than a million Afghans in the past two years, yet many have quickly attempted to return -- preferring to take their chances dodging the law than struggle for existence in a homeland some had never even seen before.

"Going back there would be sentencing my family to death," said Hayatullah, a 46-year-old Afghan deported via the Torkham border crossing in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in early 2024.

Since April and a renewed deportation drive, some 200,000 Afghans have spilled over the two main border crossings from Pakistan, entering on trucks loaded with hastily packed belongings, reported AFP.

But they carry little hope of starting over in the impoverished country, where girls are banned from school after primary level.

Hayatullah, a pseudonym, returned to Pakistan a month after being deported, travelling around 800 kilometers (500 miles) south to the Chaman border crossing in Balochistan, because for him, life in Afghanistan "had come to a standstill".

He paid a bribe to cross the Chaman frontier, "like all the day laborers who regularly travel across the border to work on the other side".

His wife and three children -- including daughters, aged 16 and 18, who would be denied education in Afghanistan -- had managed to avoid arrest and deportation.

Relative security

Hayatullah moved the family to Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and a region mostly populated by Pashtuns -- the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan.

"Compared to Islamabad, the police here don't harass us as much," he said.

The only province governed by the opposition party of former Prime Minister Imran Khan -- who is now in prison and in open conflict with the federal government -- Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is considered a refuge of relative security for Afghans.

Samad Khan, a 38-year-old Afghan who also spoke using a pseudonym, also chose to relocate his family to Peshawar.

Born in eastern Pakistan's Lahore city, he set foot in Afghanistan for the first time on April 22 -- the day he was deported.

"We have no relatives in Afghanistan, and there's no sign of life. There's no work, no income, and the Taliban are extremely strict," he said.

At first, he tried to find work in a country where 85 percent of the population lives on less than one dollar a day, but after a few weeks he instead found a way back to Pakistan.

"I paid 50,000 rupees (around $180) to an Afghan truck driver," he said, using one of his Pakistani employees' ID cards to cross the border.

He rushed back to Lahore to bundle his belongings and wife and two children -- who had been left behind -- into a vehicle, and moved to Peshawar.

"I started a second-hand shoe business with the support of a friend. The police here don't harass us like they do in Lahore, and the overall environment is much better," he told AFP.

- 'Challenging' reintegration -

It's hard to say how many Afghans have returned, as data is scarce.

Government sources, eager to blame the country's problems on supporters Khan, claim that hundreds of thousands of Afghans are already back and settled in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa -- figures that cannot be independently verified.

Migrant rights defenders in Pakistan say they've heard of such returns, but insist the numbers are limited.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) told AFP that "some Afghans who were returned have subsequently chosen to remigrate to Pakistan".

"When individuals return to areas with limited access to basic services and livelihood opportunities, reintegration can be challenging," said Avand Azeez Agha, communications officer for the UN agency in Kabul.

They might move on again, he said, "as people seek sustainable opportunities".