…Israeli Ambassador Danny Danon nor acting U.S. deputy ambassador Cherith Norman Chalet mentioned annexation in their briefings to the council, instead focusing on the fight against COVID-19 in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza.

Chalet said the United States “has been heartened to see signs of good will, humanity and unity between Israelis and Palestinians,” highlighting Israel’s training of four teams of Palestinian health care workers on the COVID-19 response and establishment of a control room by Israeli and Palestinian leaders to enhance coordination and communications.

She said urged the council “to help the parties choose true leadership over politics as usual, and to work together to ensure that the prospect of peace remains within reach.”

Danon said that “Israel has chosen to put aside politics” and has strengthened cooperation with the United Nations and the Palestinian Authority to mitigate the effects of COVID-19.

Israel is helping fund a U.N. emergency plan, has granted permits allowing thousands of Palestinians to work in Israel and has donated large amounts of equipment to the Palestinian Authority, he said. “In the past weeks, over 600 tons of medical supplies, 25,000 tons of food and 60,000 tons of building materials have entered the Gaza Strip.”

But Danon accused the Palestinians of accepting aid while it “spreads lies and incites against Israel in the media and in official letters to the council.” including blaming Israeli soldiers for the virus.

Addressing the Palestinian ambassador, he said, “The Palestinian Authority must decide if incitement against Israel is more important than the fruitful cooperation intended to save Palestinian lives.”

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Amid the coronavirus pandemic, a survey published Sunday by the Israel Democracy Institute (IDI) ahead of the country’s 72nd Independence Day traced a surge in the number of Israelis who identify with the state and view its problems as their own.

The increase in the sense of belonging was particularly significant among two groups that are normally sidelined but have now been hit relatively hard by the COVID-19 outbreak: ultra-Orthodox Jews and Arab Israelis.

NZFOI: As New Zealand considers how technology can be used to combat COVID-19….

“All means will be used to fight the spread of the coronavirus,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on March 14, “including technological means, digital means, and other means that until today I have refrained from using among the civilian population.” As Haaretz reported, this means Israel will now unleash cyber tech “usually used for counter-terror” to enforce quarantines and to check the movements of people testing positive for the virus.

Following the announcement, the country’s Attorney General “approved the use of cyber measures to track patients’ phones,” essentially green-lighting Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence service, to actively track citizens by geolocating their cellphones and, one can assume, to build a database of where and when. The same intel can also be used to determine who else was in the vicinity of a known patient on a timeline, establishing potential infections, although such measures were not spelled out in any of the announcements today.

And, just like, that Israel joins Iran and China in the deployment of state-level intel gathering tools to track its population as it tries to prevent its coronavirus outbreak from getting out of control. Geolocating phones is a simple tech—in tandem with the carriers, the granularity can be pretty precise in urban locations. The fact this is being presented as a counter-terror intel tool suggests it is more than just a basic policing-level solution, more than just simple geofencing.

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JERUSALEM (Reuters) – All Israelis should wear face masks while in public as a precaution against the coronavirus, and upcoming Jewish, Muslim and Christian holidays should be marked only with immediate family, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday.

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