Offshore gas and in-house debate
Security cabinet set to vote on compromise to break up gas monopoly; explosive Knesset session raises tensions with Arab MKs
Marissa Newman is The Times of Israel political correspondent.
With the security cabinet poised to vote on the government’s deal with Israel’s gas magnates to break up their monopoly, the Hebrew press on Thursday evaluates the concessions made by both sides. The Israeli dailies also set its sights on a different less-than-noble explosion in the Knesset a day earlier.
“It was a long and dirty process, laden with [political] spin, but it’s possible that from here on out there is no way back: a compromise was reached between the state and the Delek and Noble Energy gas companies last night on structural changes to the Israeli gas market,” Yedioth Ahronoth reports. Barring any last-minute “surprises,” the security cabinet is set to approve the deal, it reports.
Yedioth leads with a Q&A on the impending gas deal, noting that “it affects each and every one of us.”
“The new deal will have a direct effect on the price we pay for gas at home, and no less important – on the state’s profits from the offshore natural gas in Israel,” it reports. As part of the deal, the state agreed not to regulate the price of gas, while the companies pledged to sell the mid-sized Tanin and Karish fields within 14 months, it reports. Whether it will raise or lower prices for Israeli buyers remain unseen, it notes.
Over in Haaretz, the paper reports that Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon, who announced several weeks ago that he wouldn’t get involved in the gas monopoly over his ties to businessman Kobi Maimon, won’t take part in the vote. The security cabinet will not be asked to approve the deal point-by-point, it reports, but must merely vote that the gas issue has security or political ramifications, thus allowing the government to bypass anti-trust commissioner David Gilo, who announced his resignation in May. Bringing the issue to the security cabinet is an “unusual” step, it reports.
Israel Hayom, meanwhile, focuses on a stormy Knesset session in which Deputy Interior Minister Yaron Mazuz told Arab MKs that the state was “doing them a favor” by allowing them to sit in the Israeli parliament.
Columnist Haim Shine hailed the debate for raising questions about “loyalty to the state and the relationship between rights and obligations.”
“It’s important to clarify — openly and honestly, without fear or bias — if Arab Israelis are Palestinians whose representatives in the Knesset are a delegation on behalf of Hamas and the PA, or whether they are citizens who have the same obligations of loyalty as any other citizen,” he writes.
“One can’t simultaneously represent the interests of Hamas, which wants to destroy the state — and expect the state to approve budgets and full freedom of movement. The time has come to stop the hypocrisy and cynicism. Democracy is allowed to condemn collaborators with the enemy. Those who claim that the Islamic State learned its methods from the Zionists, anyone who is a Hezbollah agent during an IDF operation, and MKs who clash with IDF soldiers on a flotilla to Gaza must know there is a price and an end to the lawlessness.”
Yedioth reports that the “unusual and problematic statement that the deputy interior minister made during the debate, managed to surprise and mark a new chapter in the book of clashes between Jewish and Arab MKs.”
After the screaming match, Joint (Arab) List MK Hanin Zoabi, who participated in the 2010 Mavi Marmara flotilla to Gaza, took to the Knesset podium to defend fellow MK Basel Ghattas’s right to join the flotilla headed to the coastal enclave, it reports.
Haaretz dedicates its editorial to defending Ghattas’s bid, condemning the Knesset for recommending the Arab lawmaker be suspended if he goes ahead with it.
“The Gaza-bound flotilla may not be popular with the Israeli public and among most MKs, but unpopular ideas are the ones especially in need of protection,” it writes. “The measures the Knesset is threatening to take against Ghattas are a clear example of the tyranny of the majority; in an ostensibly democratic move based on majority decision, they intend punishing whoever doesn’t believe as the majority does.”
“Beyond the parliamentary attempt to rein in Ghattas, it is important to remember that the purpose of the flotilla is to break the blockade that Israel has imposed on Gaza, which continues an unacceptable situation in which nearly two million people are closed up as if in a cage,” it continues. “Instead of ‘killing the messenger’ who is trying to increase awareness of an ongoing injustice, it would behoove the State of Israel to remove the blockade and help rebuild the Gaza Strip.”
The Times of Israel Community.