Aug 21, 2015

“You can quote me: I don’t give a damn.” It would seem that this succinct phrase directed toward participants at the Electricity Authority session (Aug. 6), convened to depose Chairwoman Orit Farkash-HaCohen, sums up Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s conduct concerning the natural gas issue — an issue that is worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

Netanyahu’s disdain was immediately directed at Deputy Attorney General Avi Licht, who warned against the legal implications of deposing Farkash-HaCohen and appointing a replacement without tender. Her sins were in warning that Netanyahu’s natural gas plan would result in a steep rise in domestic utility bills and her refusal to approve the natural gas contracts with the Tamar gas field cartel. Now, it turns out that Netanyahu’s contempt had also been directed at Licht’s boss, Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein. In a letter to the state comptroller, Weinstein remarked that Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz, the prime minister’s yes man, had promised him that the incumbent regulators' status would not be hurt by the planned Electricity Authority reforms.

Farkash-HaCohen was not the first regulator to pay with her or his job for refusing to ignore what she thought was the public’s best interests. Before her, there was the antitrust commissioner, David Gilo, who warned in a May resignation letter against the disastrous implications of the gas plan on Israel’s defense and foreign affairs and on its energy independence. Gilo, pushed aside by Netanyahu, expressed his hope that government ministries would change their position vis-à-vis the plan. In an Aug. 16 Cabinet vote, however, 17 of the ministers voted in favor of the plan. Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon, Housing and Construction Minister Yoav Galant and Welfare Minister Chaim Katz abstained due to conflicts of interest. Environmental Protection Minister Avi Gabai returned from an overseas trip for 24 hours to vote against it. Gabai joined critics of the plan who argue that exporting gas before other reservoirs are developed could create a shortage of domestic energy sources and result in a cost of living spike.

The natural gas cartel affair is accompanied by more than just grating verbal contempt. Suspicious flair requires a thorough investigation. In an article in the Israeli financial daily The Marker, analyst Avi Bar-Eli wondered what had happened to the Netanyahu of 2005, who as finance minister compared the government’s electricity cartel to the Nazi destroyer “Bismarck” and two years earlier likened the market cartels to a Bermuda Triangle threatening the country’s future. What, Bar-Eli wondered, is making the prime minister push forward on a gas cartel that controls public assets to the tune of a trillion shekels ($250 billion). Is this another case in which the explanation for Netanyahu’s behavior lies in the casino and freebie newspaper Yisrael Hayom owned by his patron, the casino mogul Sheldon Adelson?

A hint of Adelson’s link to the gas cartel can be found on the website of the US-Israel Business Initiative, a lobbying group whose stated goal is to increase American companies’ access to the Israeli market. Adelson, CEO of the Las Vegas Sands Corporation, tops the list of executive board members. Also on the list is Keith Elliott, senior vice president of Noble Energy’s Eastern Mediterranean operations. Noble, together with the Delek Corporation, has a controlling interest in the Tamar natural gas reservoir. Two months ago in Haaretz, the investigative journalist Uri Blau published a photocopy of a letter Adelson sent last summer to Netanyahu in his capacity as head of the initiative. In it, Adelson suggests that the prime minister streamline regulation of Israel’s natural gas assets and update the free trade agreement between Israel and the United States.