Israel News for 12-18-2025
News Update
Israel has finalized a massive $34 billion natural gas export deal with Egypt. Around $18 billion will go to the Israel’s treasury. The deal will guarantee Israeli gas exports to Egypt for 15 years. Israeli officials believe that Egyptian dependency on Israeli gas will deter Egypt from violating it’s peace treaty with Israel. According to information gathered in recent years, Egypt has introduced forces into Sinai far beyond what is permitted under the security annex of the peace treaty. It has also built tunnels deep inside Sinai for storing weapons and has suspiciously extended runways at airfields. Egypt had been in talks with Qatar to build a gas pipeline, prior to the agreement with Israel.
Nvidia, currently the world’s most valuable company, announced plans to invest close to $2 billion to build a major new campus in northern Israel, near Haifa. Construction is slated to begin in 2027, with initial occupancy planned for 2031. The site will cover 22 acres, with 160,000 square meters of built space. Israel is already the company’s largest and most important development center outside the United States, and Nvidia is one of the largest employers in the Israeli high‑tech sector. The new campus will accommodate over 10,000 workers, double Nvidia’s current workforce in Israel.
Israel’s Ministry of Defense has announced that Germany’s Bundestag has approved the expansion of its Arrow 3 deal with Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) by an additional $3.1 billion. The latest Arrow 3 deal, signed by the Israeli and German defense ministries, will bring the total amount Germany is spending on the long-range missile defense system to more than $6.7 billion.
Prime Minister Netanyahu officially broke ground on the “Tel Aviv Metro”, a long awaited project that will take years to complete and will cost over 150 – 200 billion shekels. Once completed, it is expected to serve about 2 million passengers a day, connect more than 20 local authorities and fundamentally transform public transportation across the Tel Aviv metropolitan area. The completion date is 2040.
Former prime minister Naftali Bennett acknowledged that his Telegram account was hacked by Iranian-linked hackers, who published thousands of phone numbers and private messages attributed to him and his associates.
Happy Hanukkah!
