Asaf Zamir, Israel’s tourism minister has resigned from the fractious government, saying he does not have an “ounce of trust” in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, accusing him of putting his personal and legal issues ahead of the response to the COVID-19 crisis. Zamir is a member of the centrist Blue and White party, which battled Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud in three stalemated elections in under a year before forming an emergency government with it in May to combat the pandemic. Israel went into a second nationwide lockdown last month and is now grappling with one of the worst outbreaks in the world on a per capita basis. The emergency government has been roiled by infighting and has faced widespread criticism over its confusing and often contradictory response to the pandemic.
