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What We're Watching: Israel's fourth shot, Nordic NATO jitters, EU nuclear debate heats up
Fourth time’s the charm in Israel. As the COVID omicron variant sweeps the globe, Israel has become the first country to roll out a fourth vaccine shot for health care workers, immunocompromised residents, and people over the age of 60. (The eligibility criteria will likely be broadened in the weeks ahead.) Pushing back against those who say that more research is required to gauge the effectiveness of a fourth shot, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said that omicron is “a new ballgame altogether.” This comes as Israel's health ministry said recently that the country could soon reach herd immunity due to a combination of vaccination rates (64 percent of the population is fully vaccinated) and mounting infections (Bennett warned Sunday that daily infections could soon reach 50,000, up from the current daily caseload of 6,500). Israeli health officials say that although omicron’s spread is inevitable, the aim is to keep deaths and hospitalizations as low as possible by keeping inoculation rates sky-high. Will other countries follow suit?
As Biden tries to reassure Kyiv, Nordics get jittery. Days after Joe Biden held a tense two-hour call with Vladimir Putin over Moscow’s increasing encroachment on the Ukrainian border, the US president spoke to his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky. Biden told the Ukrainian president that America and its allies will “respond decisively” if Russia tries to invade Ukraine. (In recent months, Moscow has amassed 100,000 troops on Ukraine’s eastern border). The Kremlin, for its parts, wants reassurances that NATO won't expand further in Europe, and recently warned that relations with Washington could be severed entirely if its “red lines” aren't respected. But Washington’s attempts at shuttle diplomacy — coupled with strongly-worded threats — don’t seem to be making European states any less jittery: a debate not seen since Russia's 2014 invasion of Crimea has recently erupted in Finland over whether the state should apply to join NATO, after Moscow threatened to respond militarily if both Finland and Sweden join the alliance.
EU's sustainable energy investment plans. Brussels has proposed certifying nuclear power and natural gas as "green" sources of energy in order to encourage EU investment in both sectors. This is part of the bloc's overall efforts to achieve net zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2050. The plan will become law next year if a simple majority of EU member states agree. But the debate could get heated, particularly between France – newly inaugurated EU president and by far the EU's largest producer of electricity from atomic power – and Germany, which has dramatically scaled back its use of nuclear energy since the 2011 Fukushima accident in Japan in favor of renewable energy sources. Germany plans to be nuclear-free by the end of this year. While the French have nine mostly Eastern member states on their side, the Germans captain the EU's five-member anti-nuclear club. While nuclear power is reliable and generates almost zero direct emissions, nuclear plants are expensive, produce radioactive waste – and there's always the risk of another Chernobyl. Meanwhile, natural gas seems to generate more political consensus as a sustainable investment, though EU states including Germany, Austria and Luxembourg warn that certifying it as green, even only to facilitate the transition to more clean energy, would go against the EU's ambitious climate plans.Israel's "anyone but Bibi" election
Israel's merry-go-round politics are front and center again as Israelis are set to head to the polls on March 23 — the fourth time in two years. Billions of shekels later, will Israel's longest-serving Prime Minister Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu finally be shown the door?
While anything can happen in Israel's tumultuous politics, Bibi's downfall seems as likely as ever (though the race is tight) as his Likud party languishes in the polls. So what's changed, and what's the state of play as the campaign enters the homestretch?
Who are the key players?
One key difference this time around is that several longtime Netanyahu loyalists have defected from Likud, forming a new alliance on the right to oust their former boss.
The right-wing New Hope party, led by former Netanyahu ally Gideon Sa'ar, has attracted former Bibi allies, signaling a major blow for the loyalty-obsessed incumbent. At the same time, Bibi is having a hard time reverting to his old playbook of "left-shaming" because Sa'ar and his cohort have risen through the ranks of Bibi's own Likud camp, and their right-wing bonafides are well established.
In an electorate where a majority of Jewish Israelis identify as "right-wing," Netanyahu has to reinvent the wheel — a lot. However, while early political momentum seemed to be on Sa'ar's side, recent polls show his popularity waning, thus complicating his path to forming a viable coalition (though he could still sit in a coalition led by a different party).
For years, Benjamin Netanyahu has portrayed himself as Israel's elder statesman — the only leader who can aptly represent Israel on the international stage, and push back against global heavyweights to defend Israel's acute security needs. While polls still show his Likud party would likely win the most seats if elections were held today (29 out of 120), it's unclear whether he would be able to cobble together a coalition to clinch a 61-seat majority.
Moreover, Bibi's global leadership record resonates less with a struggling Israeli public that's been crippled by the economic aftershocks of the pandemic. Although Israel is beyond the darkest days when 800,000 people lost their jobs in mere weeks, and unemployment soared to a staggering 24 percent, economists say that the country's economic recovery will take a number of years.
Meanwhile, Yair Lapid of the centrist Yesh Atid party is gaining steam in the polls (he would pick up about 20 seats if the ballot was held today). Lapid — a former journalist who entered the political fray in 2012 focusing on social justice, economic inequality and reducing the outsized influence of the ultra-Orthodox in Israel's political life — has a simple message: bringing "sanity" back into Israeli politics. But opponents on the right say Lapid's lack of governing experience (he served only a brief stint as finance minister from 2013-2014) is disqualifying as the COVID crisis lingers.
Naftali Bennett, a former Netanyahu protégé, is shaping up to be "kingmaker." Both an anti-Bibi coalition as well as a Netanyahu-led bloc would need the support of his right-wing Yamina party (currently polling at 11 seats) to reach a majority in the Knesset, Israel's parliament.
What are some of the key issues?
Pandemic and economic revival. The Netanyahu campaign's main selling point is that the PM has overseen the world's speediest vaccine rollout, with 60 percent of the population having now received a jab (though he's been criticized for not providing enough vaccines to Palestinians in the occupied West Bank). Bibi is touting his strong record securing millions of doses of the coveted Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine before many other countries, which has resulted in European states like Denmark, Austria, Hungary and the Czech Republic now turning to Israel for help. But his political opponents are highlighting the country's economic stagnation, high unemployment rate, and mixed messaging on the pandemic that showed deference to Bibi's ultra-Orthodox political allies as signs that change is needed now more than ever.
Bibi's corruption trial, the judiciary, and democracy. The election campaign comes to a head as Bibi faces an ongoing corruption trial that could send him to prison. The PM says the courts have overreached, but critics argue that Bibi's desperate to stay at the helm so he can pass a retroactive law that would bar a sitting prime minister from facing trial. In their view, Netanyahu — and his supporters — have launched a vicious attack on the judiciary that's undermining Israel's separation of powers. If Netanyahu retains power, Lapid says, Israel will cease to be a democracy: "It's not a dictatorship, it's an in-between, a hybrid, anywhere between Hungary and Turkey."
Bottom line: With Israel's once-dominant left-wing camp in tatters, the upcoming political battle will take place solely on the right. Bibi has established himself as the perennial come-back kid, but this time it'll be much harder to use his old tricks against those who used to be on the inside.
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The race to vaccinate: Dr. Atul Gawande provides perspective
Can the US vaccinate enough of its population to prevent hundreds of thousands of deaths before new and more contagious COVID-19 variants take hold? And will these vaccines even be effective against more adaptable mutations of the virus? Surgeon and public health expert Dr. Atul Gawande, most recently of the Biden/Harris COVID-19 Transition Task Force, joins Ian Bremmer on GZERO World to discuss the latest in the global effort to vaccinate our way out of this pandemic. He also explains why people should get the Johnson & Johnson vaccine if offered the chance, despite its lower overall efficacy rate compared to the mRNA-based vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna.
What We're Watching: Putin's next move, jabs for Palestinians, Wine goes to court in Uganda
What next for Navalny? Thousands of protesters supporting jailed Russian dissident Alexei Navalny braved an overwhelming police response on Sunday, turning out in more than 80 cities across the country to demand his release from prison. It was the second protest to occur in the two weeks since Navalny was jailed after his return from Germany, and more than 5,000 people were arrested nationwide. The intensity of the police response shows the Kremlin is taking no chances with the protesters, even though their numbers are still relatively small — nowhere near, say, the hundreds of thousands who poured into the streets of Belarus' capital last fall. And it's hard to imagine Vladimir Putin agreeing to release Navalny under pressure from the streets. In fact, it looks like his kangaroo courts are gearing up to lock up the nettlesome anti-corruption crusader and throw away the key. Europe and the US have threatened action if that happens, but sanctions against Russia have proved ineffective in the past. Lacking a political party in a system that is rigged for the party in power anyway, Navalny only has the streets: can they really shake things up enough from below that power starts to crack at the top?
Israel delivers some COVID vaccines to Palestinians: Israel has agreed to send 5,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccine to Palestinian front-line workers in the occupied West Bank. After rolling out the world's most successful vaccination drive, having already inoculated more than 57 percent of its entire population, Israel came under fire in recent weeks for failing to include Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank in its ambitious inoculation scheme, though Israeli Arabs and Palestinians living in East Jerusalem were given the jab. Israel, for its part, says that under the terms of the Oslo Accords, the de-facto law of the land, the Palestinian Authority (PA) should oversee healthcare for its people. But critics say that the Fourth Geneva Convention states that an occupying power (Israel) has a clear responsibility to assist those living under its occupation (the Palestinians). While Israel's approval of the transfer is a positive development, the PA, which governs the West Bank, is still waiting on millions of doses to vaccinate its 2.5 million people. This deal also doesn't include the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, which already has one of the worst healthcare systems in the world. Palestinians (in the West Bank and Gaza) have inked deals for Russia's Sputnik V vaccine, the AstraZeneca drug, and are also waiting on batches through the international COVAX system which aren't expected to arrive until March.
Mr Wine goes to court: Ugandan opposition leader Bobi Wine has called on his country's Supreme Court to nullify the results of last month's election in which president Yoweri Museveni — a former rebel leader in power since the 1980s — was declared the winner. Wine and his supporters allege ballot-stuffing and other fraud, and argue that violence directed at Wine by Museveni's forces during the campaign made it impossible for the election to be free and fair. By taking his arguments to a court packed with Museveni appointees, Wine — a former pop star who is popular with younger, urban Ugandans — runs the risk of having his objections formally stricken down altogether. But he and his supporters are making the gamble that the opportunity to present their arguments is, by itself, worth the effort in order to expose the president.