“There is no question about it. You know how to talk, but we never did get the answers we asked for.” That is how Eitan Cabel, Zionist Camp member and chairman of the Knesset’s Economic Affairs Committee, jokingly summarized his committee’s discussion about the distribution and benefits of the pending natural gas outline. Cabel was addressing the star witness of the Dec. 7 meeting, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. By that point, humor seemed to be all that Cabel had left. Together with the other opposition members, he had lost all hope of getting direct responses from Netanyahu, who sat before the committee by virtue of also holding the economic affairs portfolio for the sole purpose of “defending” the controversial gas outline.
The Knesset members had lots of interesting questions for Netanyahu, like the one by Zionist Camp's Shelly Yachimovich about why Netanyahu claims that the gas has yet to be extracted when the Tamar reserve has been producing gas for two years now. Those who expected him to actually answer such questions were deluding themselves. Netanyahu had no intention of falling into such a trap with the cameras rolling.
