No portfolio request from her is on record this cycle. The plan she presented at the campaign launch was aliyah and reversing the brain drain, not energy; the energy link is her regulatory past, nothing she has asked for.
Who they are
Orit Farkash-Hacohen is a lawyer who spent a decade regulating Israel’s electricity market and was the first woman to chair the Electricity Authority. She was born in Petah Tikva in 1970 to Michael Farkash, born in Romania, and Shoshana, born in Poland, grew up in Ashdod, studied at the Bnei Akiva Amana ulpana in Kfar Saba and did national service at Shaare Zedek hospital in Jerusalem. She read law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, clerked for Justice Dalia Dorner, then moved to the legal department of the Antitrust Authority, where she led the litigation team on large economic cases. She became legal adviser to the Electricity Authority in 2003 and took a public administration master’s at Harvard in 2007.
Private generators entered the power market during her term as chair, she set the tariffs and market rules behind them, and solar generation was promoted in Israel for the first time. In August 2015 she was reported to have been removed at the request of the prime minister and the energy minister over the stand she took against the natural gas monopoly on gas pricing, and her term ended that year.
Farkash-Hacohen became a partner at the law firm Goldfarb Seligman in 2017, entered the Knesset for Blue and White in 2019, and held the strategic affairs and tourism portfolios before the science ministry.
Positions and record
Energy: Grid reform and renewables from a former chief regulator.
Tech: State backing for R&D beyond the startup bubble.
Consumers: Fought the utilities on prices and won.
Gas monopoly: As Electricity Authority chair in 2015, she publicly opposed pricing terms favoring Israel's natural-gas monopoly; Netanyahu and Energy Minister Steinitz then had her removed from the post.
Where they stand
Holds the party line on every issue.