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Feb. 11, 2021
As of mid-week, over 5,200 Israelis had died of COVID-19, more than 3.6 million Israelis had been vaccinated, and the prime minister of Israel was still waiting for a call from the new president of the United States.
On Monday, police officers, Border Police, Shin Bet agents and members of the court security service were deployed outside the Jerusalem District Court, where Benjamin Netanyahu was attending the second hearing in his corruption trial. Roadblocks, police vans, explosives detection dogs, a helicopter hovering above. This was no circus – it was a war zone.
It looked as though half the security and policing forces of the State of Israel were concentrated in the streets around the courthouse on Saladin Street in East Jerusalem. If the Jordanian army had wanted to make a move on Israel, all it would have had to do was bypass the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood and within two hours it would have been on Frishman Beach in Tel Aviv.