Clearly, investments in private sector projects constitute an essential part of the modern economy and should be encouraged and supported. Entrepreneurs who launch projects and then bring them to fruition possess the highest quality skills. Naturally their efforts should earn for them appropriate rewards. This applies to all productive sectors, including those of construction and of the property market.

However it is also clear that developers in the latter sectors do not enjoy a good reputation in the society at large. They are considered by many as people ready to speculate on the value of land; and ready at all costs to twist the rule of how and where to build - as well as environmental laws - in order to reach their targets, generally with the intention of maximising profits with the least expense possible.

Unfortunately such suspicions are frequently justified. The limited size of our territory renders it a platform for speculation: no matter what happens, every inch of land will increase in value from year to year. In this context, developers have still not convinced the majority of citizens that they are prepared to respect the national interest.

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INVESTMENT NEEDS

Long term plans were laid out in the past, since before Independence, even if they were not meant to have a span of twenty to twenty five years. It is true that the "technology" of planning has changed - plans are no longer called plans: more usually they get called visions or something similar. They always served as a map, detailed or less so, for the future we wanted to achieve... as in the 1970's, when the British military base was being wound down.

In the plans of the past, a defect was that lots of beautiful and redundant words would be employed, when a shorter text would have been more convincing. And another defect was that investment commitments (how much money would be mobilised for them and how it was to be spent) would be fudged. One could claim that the same defects are still with us today: instead of too many words, an excess of show biz is brought into play, while about the needs for investment capital, clarifications remain minimal.

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REGIME CHANGE

In the Israeli-US attack on Iran, the absence of clear statements by the American side regarding their aims for the whole effort has stood out. This was not the case for Israel - Netanyahu's approach always was to draw the US into a joint operation with Israel to demolish completely the Ayatollahs' regime. His avowed aim was to eliminate the threat of an Iran equipped with nuclear and ballistic missiles, while serving as a promoter of movements in the Middle East, considered by Israel as terrorist organizations.

Although as of now, the Israeli PM appears to have succeeded in his aims, the US government has remained ambiguous about its objectives. The killing of Iran's top leaders seems to indicate it really is aiming at regime change. But at the same time, it doesn't want to repeat the mistakes made in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, among others... by sending US troops in Iran to really assert physical control over the territory.