In this Jubilee year celebrating Israel's 50th birthday, one thing certainly worthy of jubilation is the astounding growth and success of Israel's high-tech industry.
In less than 10 years high-tech research and development has catapulted a traditional, quasi-socialist economy into a lusty, global market competitor to the US's Silicon Valley.
The bad news is a mid-year budget crisis signalling a major shift in Israel's long-standing policy of government support for R&D funding. Industrialists say future growth of the most critical sector of the Israeli economy is threatened.
Technology is Israel's hope and probably only hope for future economic independence. Up 13 per cent from 1996, hightech accounted for 75 per cent of industrial exports last year, staving off disaster in an economy hit by severe recession in all other traditional sectors.
Of the $3 billion (£2.1 billion) in foreign investment during 1997, $1.5 billion was attracted by technology.
But now a 40 per cent shortfall in funding to the Office of the Chief Scientist the agency responsible for developing Israel's high-tech infrastucture has pitted Chief Scientist Orna Berry, her boss Trade and Industry Minister Natan Sharansky, and the high-tech industrialist community against the finance ministry in a fight over what many believe is the future economic health of Israel.
After lengthy talks and what the industry and the Office of Chief Scientist thought was a compromise agreement a deal with which no one was satisfied negotiations still continue. Ms Berry says she needs $463 million this year to meet increased funding demands; but so far her office has received only $327 million, down $70 million from last year's funding of $397 million.
The battle being waged, however, is not only over the immediate budget cut, but long-term policy planning, priorities and the ethics of government in Israel.
and that means high-tech gets what it needs. But he laments that the business community can't exert more leverage: "Industrialists don't have the same power. We cannot make the government fall - on the other hand, one MK [from a religious party] can."
Mr Israel Asher, electronics branch chairman of the Israel Manufacturing Association, says publicly what most are saying privately.
He says: "We wonder in these times when Netanyahu declares that Israel is the Silicon Valley of the Middle East, and that the government is very proud of the hightech industry at the same time they are cutting one of the major incentives that this industry has."
