Time of Israel: A Lot of Hot Air Over Gas Deal

A hullabaloo over Israel’s gas deal that’s more convoluted than a byzantine labyrinth takes top news in the Hebrew press on Friday, but instead of attempting to make sense out of it, the papers only make the tangle worse.

Israel Hayom, for example, refers profusely to some Article 52 which Economy Minister Aryeh Deri refused to sign on to during a cabinet meeting Thursday debating the trust-busting of the current arrangement with Delek and Nobel Energy. At no point, however, does the paper explain what this article is, or fully delineate what the matter on the table was. (The paper includes a sidebar which attempts to explain the legislation, but only muddies the waters a bit further.) Deri’s announcement left the cabinet “in shock” and dead silent, and now the government has to rejig the article in order to bypass the Shas party lawmaker, which will require sending the whole matter of Israel’s natural gas and the government’s relationship with these companies to the Knesset.