Yair Lapid
Yair LapidFlash 90

The 2015 election campaign has officially started, and with it comes the parade of broken political promises – with one by former Finance Minister Yair Lapid leading the pack. Barely a month ago, Lapid announced with great fanfare the establishment of what was to be the largest ice cream factory in the Middle East, but on Wednesday, Osem, the company that was set to build the factory, said that in the end, there would be no new factory.

The factory, which was to employ 250 people, was to have been built by food giant Osem. Arad, located 25 kilometers (15.5 miles) west of the Dead Sea, was badly hit in October when Arad Towels, closed down after 40 years, resulting in 200 workers being laid off. The new factory, residents hoped, would make up for the loss of jobs from the towel factory closure.

But apparently that is not going to happen, sources in the company said. The factory was to have benefited from a government grant given to businesses opening in depressed areas, but Osem officials said that there have been no meetings between them and Treasury officials on the matter – and none are scheduled. The Arad project, said a company officials, is “facing complications that will apparently not enable us to move the factory to its new location.”

Arad residents were very disappointed to hear the news, but less disappointed were workers at the Osem facility in Kiryat Malachi, which Osem planned to close down in favor of the Arad factory. When it was announced, Moshe Machlouf, head of the Kiryat Malachi factory's workers committee, called the decision “a shock and an embarrassment. They are taking money from one pocket to pay the other. The blood of workers in Arad is not thicker than our blood.” MK Erel Margalit (Labor) decried the move, saying that it “will not create new jobs, but will simply replace the currently unemployed in Arad with new unemployed in Kiryat Malachi.”

In a statement, Treasury officials said that during the course of negotiations, it had become clear that Osem did not need special assistance – which Lapid apparently promised they would get - to move the factory to Arad. “Osem can use existing tools to complete their investment in the project,” a Treasury spokesperson said. Yair Lapid's office did not comment on the matter.