Israel is set to scale down this year's Memorial Day events, with most cemeteries shut and national events held without an audience due to the health restrictions meant to curb the spread of coronavirus.
Starting at 4pm Monday, the country's cemeteries will be shuttered until Wednesday evening, with a nationwide lockdown to go into effect starting Tuesday evening and until the end of the Independence Day late Wednesday.
Most national ceremonies are either prerecorded or were to be held without an audience.
From 5pm Tuesday, all public transportation will be halted. Israelis will be allowed to venture 100 meters outside their homes or to buy medications, food and receive essential services within their minicipal boundaries.
All supermarkets will be closed starting Tuesday afternoon and until 8pm Wednesday, when the lockdown is lifted.
Memorial Day will commence Monday evening when a one-minute siren will ring out across the country, after which the national memorial ceremony will be held at the Western Wall plaza in Jerusalem with no crowd.
President Reuven Rivlin is set to speak at the start of the ceremony, while audiences at home will be called upon to sing the national anthem from their balconies and windows.
Incongruity, a memorial ceremony in English will be held at the Yad La-Shiryon Museum in Latrun and will be broadcast live on the Masa Israel Journey Facebook page.
The service is set to be the largest English language service ever held an Israel and will be watched by thousands of Jewish communities throughout the world. President Rivlin, Head of the Jewish Agency Yitzhak Herzog and Minister for Diaspora Affairs Tzipi Hotoveli are set to take part in the event.
Also speaking at the event will the father of Sergeant Max Steinberg, a lone soldier who was killed during 2014 Gaza war, known as Operation Protective Edge.
At 8:30pm will be held a joint Israeli-Palestinian memorial service, organized by Combatants for Peace and The Parents Circle-Families Forum.
At 9pm, a memorial service will be held at the Knesset's plaza in Jerusalem.
Also at 9pm, a special memorial - called “Songs in Their Memory - event is expected to take place inside the parliament. It's organized by the Knesset, Defense Ministry and the National Social Security Agency. It will be recorded without an audience and shown on Channel 11 at 9pm and Channel 12 at 10:10pm.
On Tuesday, a two-minute siren will be heard across the country at 11am, followed by the main memorial service honoring the fallen IDF soldiers on Mount Herzl in the capital. President Rivlin, Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Naftali Bennett are all expected to attend the event.
The main memorial service for the victims of terror attacks will be held immediately afterward at 1pm.
Both events will be held without an audience.
Forty-two soldiers were killed since last Memorial Day and the number of Israeli casualties of war stands at 23,816, counted since 1873, according to figures released by the Defense Ministry.
The total number of terror victims stands at 4,166, with the last victim being Rina Shnerb, who was killed in August 2019, when she was hit by an improvised explosive device when she visited Danny Spring near the West Bank settlement of Dolev.
At 7:40pm Tuesday, the traditional transition ceremony from Memorial Day to Independence Day will be held at Mount Herzl.
At 9:40am Wednesday, a ceremonial flyby will be held by the IAF's acrobatic planes wing over the country's hospitals in honor of Israel's medical workers who are battling COVID-19 epidemic.
The 72nd Independence Day festivities will end at 7:30pm Wednesday with the Israel Prize award ceremony.