1 / 10Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday announced a new countrywide lockdown will be imposed amid a stubborn surge in coronavirus cases, with schools and parts of the economy expected to shut down in a bid to bring down infection rates.2 / 10Beginning Friday, the start of the Jewish High Holiday season, schools, restaurants and hotels will shut down, among other businesses, and Israelis will face restrictions on movement.3 / 10“Our goal is to stop the increase (in cases) and lower morbidity,” Netanyahu said in a nationally broadcast statement. “I know that these steps come at a difficult price for all of us. This is not the holiday we are used to.” 4 / 10The tightening of measures marks the second time Israel is being plunged into a lockdown, after a lengthy shutdown in the spring.5 / 10The lockdown will remain in place for at least three weeks, at which point officials are expected to relax measures if numbers are seen declining. That lockdown is credited with having brought down what were much lower infection numbers, but it wreaked havoc on the country’s economy, sending unemployment skyrocketing.6 / 10Israelis typically hold large family gatherings and pack synagogues during the important fast of Yom Kippur, settings that officials feared could trigger new outbreaks.7 / 10A sticking point in government deliberations over the lockdown was what prayers would look like during the holidays.The strict limits on faithful prompted Israeli Housing Minister Yaakov Litzman, who represents ultra-Orthodox Jews, to resign from the government.8 / 10Israel has had more than 150,000 confirmed cases of the coronavirus and more than 1,100 deaths.Given its population of 9 million, the country now has one of the world’s worst outbreaks. It is now seeing more than 4,000 daily cases of the virus.9 / 10Israel earned praise for its initial handling of the coronavirus outbreak, moving quickly to seal the country’s borders and appearing to bring infections under control. It has since been criticized for opening businesses and schools too quickly and allowing the virus to spread unchecked. At the press conference Sunday announcing the lockdown, Netanyahu defended his response, saying Israel’s economy had emerged from the first lockdown in a better state than many other developed nations and that while cases were high, the country’s coronavirus mortality numbers were lower than other countries with similar outbreaks.10 / 10Much of that criticism has been aimed at Netanyahu, who has faced a public outcry over his handling of the crisis and has seen thousands of protesters descend on his Jerusalem residence every week.While lauded for his decisive response following the spring outbreak, Netanyahu appeared distracted by politics and personal matters, including his trial for corruption allegations, as infections rose over the summer.Netanyahu has also been lambasted for seeming to cave to pressure from various interest groups, including most recently his ultra-Orthodox governing partners, who appeared to have convinced him to abandon a pinpointed, city-based lockdown plan that would have mostly affected ultra-Orthodox and Arab communities.