UPDATES
4 pm Israel time, Friday, April 10 2015
**The holiday of Passover comes to an end at sundown today. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis have spent the past week traveling and picnicking in national parks throughout the country. Despite cool weather, the National Parks Authority reports that more than 50,000 Israelis entered parks this morning alone.
**If anyone is keeping track, Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition talks have not been going very smoothly. Faced with an initial April 22 deadline (he can ask for another two weeks extension after that), Netanyahu has yet to reach an agreement with any of the parties expected to join him.
This, in itself, is not very unusual. It usually takes at least a month to sort out all the demands and concessions that each party makes of the party attempting to form the coalition.
Netanyahu’s apparent strategy is to wait until all parties are in agreement on coalition terms before announcing that any one of them has reached an agreement with Likud.
Nevertheless, there are signs that Shas and United Torah Judaism (the orthodox religious parties) are both getting close to reaching an agreement whereas Kulanu, Jewish Home, and Yisrael Beiteinu are still holding out for more ministerships, chairmanships, and committee assignments.
What is funny to watch is how the Israeli “left” continues to perpetuate the notion that Netanyahu will eventually discard his allies on the “right” in favor of a “unity government” with Herzog and Livni.
Anything is possible, but given the acrimony that exists between Herzog-Livni and Likud, such a unity government seems extremely unlikely. It is made even more unlikely than “extremely unlikely” given the campaign attacks of the Left on Netanyahu and his family.
TODAY’S BLOG:
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Israel’s main offshore natural gas deposits and well locations. The yellow section in the upper left of the picture is the area off the coast of Cyprus. The red line from Mari-B to Ashdod is the pipeline from the well offshore to the mainland.
Every night at his home in Ashdod, your humble servant goes to sleep with two gas platforms–Noa and Mari B– in view a few miles off the Israel coast . Even though the development of most of Israel’s wells remains in its infancy, the flow of natural gas has begun.
And that flow is making a difference in Israel’s economic bottom line.
Today the Bank of Israel released statistics that show that Israel’s natural gas reserves contributed 0.3% of the income produced by the national economy in 2014. This may seem like a small amount, but it happens to exactly offset the cost of Israel’s war with Hamas last summer.
Moreover, the increasing natural gas boom is contributing to a favorable balance of trade, with Israel exporting $9 billion dollars more than it imported in 2014. By contrast, Israel had a $6.9 billion dollar positive trade balance in 2013, and $2.1 billion in 2012.
Despite some recent bumps along the road having to do with Israel’s attempt to de-monopolize control of the gas wells, signs point to ever better economic times ahead.
A student from Malawi, who had worked with an Israeli health volunteer in his country battling AIDS, came up to us as we walked down the street in the UC-Davis Picnic Day Parade and wanted to carry the Israeli flag.