When Israel’s controversy over judicial reform reached its peak earlier this year, there were dire predictions—some almost indistinguishable from threats—that an attempt to return to the constitutional status quo ante 1995 would send technology companies fleeing the country, and possibly tank the Israeli economy. Yet, although a judicial-reform compromise might still emerge, the country’s high-tech sector seems to be doing fine, notwithstanding some bruising from a worldwide downturn. Jonah Mandel reports:

The global economic slowdown and domestic political turmoil have not impaired the long-term prospects of Israel’s vaunted high-tech industry, officials and insiders say, despite a recent decline in hiring in the sector. Nearly 18 percent of Israel’s gross domestic product comes from the tech sector, which employs 12 percent of the workforce, generates nearly a third of its income tax, and constitutes half of exports, official figures show.

Worldwide inflation and climbing interest rates had caused a drop-off in Israeli tech jobs in 2022, with the number of hirings in the sector dipping 0.2 percent in the first quarter of 2023—its first fall since 2008, said a newly issued report. The “stagnation” in tech hiring, however, had yet to have a negative impact on Israel’s GDP or exports, said Dror Bin, director of the Israel Innovation Authority (IIA) which compiled the report together with the Start-Up Nation Policy Institute (SNPI).

IIA’s Bin noted the data indicated no immediate effect of the legal crisis on Israel’s economy. “I don’t see companies taking the operations outside of Israel,” he said. “We do see a trend of more entrepreneurs deciding to establish their legal entity outside of Israel, but the operation remains in Israel.”

On June 3, an Egyptian policeman crossed the border into Israel and killed three soldiers. Jonathan Schanzer and Natalie Ecanow urge President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to respond by visiting the Jewish state as a show of goodwill:

Such a dramatic gesture is not without precedent: in 1997, a Jordanian soldier opened fire on a group of Israeli schoolgirls visiting the “Isle of Peace,” a parcel of farmland previously under Israeli jurisdiction that Jordan leased back to Israel as part of the Oslo peace process. In a remarkable display of humanity, King Hussein of Jordan, who had only three years earlier signed a peace agreement with Israel, traveled to the Jewish state to mourn with the families of the seven girls who died in the massacre.

That massacre unfolded as a diplomatic cold front descended on Jerusalem and Amman. . . . Yet a week later, Hussein flipped the script. “I feel as if I have lost a child of my own,” Hussein lamented. He told the parents of one of the victims that the tragedy “affects us all as members of one family.”

While security cooperation [between Cairo and Jerusalem] remains strong, the bilateral relationship is still rather frosty outside the military domain. True normalization between the two nations is elusive. A survey in 2021 found that only 8 percent of Egyptians support “business or sports contacts” with Israel. With a visit to Israel, Sisi can move beyond the cold pragmatism that largely defines Egyptian-Israeli relations and recast himself as a world figure ready to embrace his diplomatic partners as human beings. At a personal level, the Egyptian leader can win international acclaim for such a move rather than criticism for his country’s poor human-rights record.