More than a year after being elected Prime Minister, Ehud Barak has failed to deliver on his economic promises. A central premise of his campaign platform was the creation of 200,000 jobs over a three-year period, but Israel’s unemployment rate still hovers around 9 percent. Recent forecasts project 3.5 percent economic expansion this year, a positive indicator for a country striving to escape a prolonged recession. Still, failure to reach a comprehensive political accord with the Palestinians may raise levels of political uncertainty and deter foreigners from injecting capital into the Israeli market.
