Families and couples were walking in and out of a restaurant in Jerusalem on a beautiful spring evening.
My friend and I exchanged worried glances—wondering if we knew where to find them—for it isn’t a common request.
Most places don’t ask for it, and those that do still welcome customers without one, provided they sit on outside patios or in gardens.
The green-pass programme worked—not because it proved one’s vaccination status and thereby enabled access to public places, but because it spurred the hesitant to get inoculated.
In December, when the vaccine first arrived in Israel, it was available for older people who were at higher risk of falling ill.
The vaccine, for the most part, is not regarded by the public in terms of an individual, personal goal, but as a communal or national one: to defeat covid-19 as a community.
Looking back on the country’s experience with the green pass since the system was introduced in February, one surprise might have been that we were not asked to show it each time we entered a restaurant, shop or museum.
And that is what happened with the green pass: the public instinctively understood that more than anything, it was a way to nudge people to get vaccinated, not a way to discriminate against those who had received their doses and those who had not.
We accepted it because we suspected that, despite the government campaign, the green pass was not really going to be used and because vaccines were widely available.
First, vaccine certificates work when they are seen by citizens as incentives to get vaccinated, not as a punishment for those who have not been.
Other countries will emerge from the crisis as well, but the time it takes will depend on the strength of their communities and their willingness to adopt every tool to defeat the virus.