The figures published last week reveal that in spite of the rather long war in Lebanon, 2006 was one of the most successful years in Israel's economic history

British Midlands had already informed Israel's Tourism Ministry that it wanted to operate regular flights from Heathrow to Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion Airport

Fercam is one of Italy's largest privately-owned independent freight and logistics operators. The agreement allows Joint Transport to widen its basket of services to the Israeli market and offer wide range of marine & air services to clients in Italy

Alitalia operates a winter schedule of two daily flights from Israel to Italy. Alitalia decided earlier this year to close its TLV cargo office

The sorting machines will be able to read handwritten Hebrew and identify the postal stamps on the envelopes. IPC had recently bought two postal sorting machines from Siemens for NIS 40 million

The decision is widely regarded as an embarrassment for El Al which had an effective monopoly over air transportation services for Government employees traveling abroad on official business

Amos Uzani, Port of Haifa dorector manager, said that since the crisis began, Haifa Port had lost over NIS 30 million revenue mainly due to the fact it was operating at 15-20% of capacity

The 2006 Index of Economic Freedom, published last week by the Heritage Foundation and “The Wall Street Journal”, ranks Israel in the 36th place