Friends Mor Misk and Omer Chorev are having coffee on a terrace in Jaffa, near Tel Aviv. They just had lunch at a table at a restaurant for the first time in months. “That was delicious, a bite to eat and a drink on a terrace,” says Chorev. “I didn’t think I would have missed that so much.”
The terraces are full in the old port city, as in other places in Tel Aviv and the rest of the country. Starting this week, restaurants and cafes may again receive guests, and sports stadiums and event halls will also open their doors. Shops, museums and most schools opened two weeks ago.
For the catering industry, the relaxation does not come a day too soon. “It feels like a party, it’s that busy today,” said Shira Petel, the owner of Shaffa Bar in Jaffa. “We even have to make people wait for a table, and that on a weekday. I hope this is the start of a period of recovery. We have had a tough year.”
Green pass
The easing in Israel follows a rapid vaccination campaign in which more than half of the population was vaccinated. In fact, about 90 percent of people over 50 have already been vaccinated. Partly because of this, the numbers of new infections and seriously ill patients have fallen sharply in recent months.
But not everything is as it used to be. Keeping your distance remains mandatory, so the tables are further apart than before. And although everyone is welcome on the terrace, you can only officially enter the restaurant with a green pass, a kind of vaccination certificate. But in practice this is not checked everywhere. “I don’t see that as my job,” says owner Petel.
–
