Israel’s economy should have been trundling towards recovery. After all, many of the 300,000 workers who left their jobs to fight have now returned to offices, factories and farms. Instead, a difficult situation is becoming ever more acute. GDP growth came to just 0.7% between April and June, on an annualised basis, some 5.2 percentage points below economists’ expectations, according to Bloomberg, a news agency. On September 16th Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s finance minister, was forced to ask legislators to approve an emergency deficit increase. It was the second time he had made such a request this year.