Frankly, Leviathan is still a mess, and has been since long before Coleman decided to fold up his cards and walk away from the table.

Some might wonder why Woodside decided to invest in a giant gas resource just outside Europe, with the proximity to some of the world's most energy-hungry gas markets, but the fact is the Australian appears to have made the right call to quit the quagmire at the eleventh hour.

It is true, Leviathan has signed a number of letters of intent, but for pipeline gas, not the LNG Woodside had planned on when it first became involved in the project back in 2012.

As an indication of just how potentially toxic Leviathan is, in recently weeks over 10,000 Israelis hit the streets to protest not Israel's role in the occupation of Palestine, or Palestinian knife attacks on Israelis, but the government's proposal for regulating the emerging gas industry.

Protests were held in 16 cities around Israel this month, with the crowd incensed that the government would give away the nation's biggest gas field to a US-based company, Noble Energy, and surrender to what some call gas monopoly.

Main streets in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Be'er Sheva and Haifa were closed because of the protests.

According to Haaretz, Professor Yaron Zelekha, the former accountant general in the finance ministry, called the deal "not just a robbery, but organised crime".

He accused the government of creating the biggest monopoly in the history of the Israeli economy, and plundering the pockets of ordinary citizens with high gas prices, while "looting [Israel's] greatest natural resource ever discovered here, after it gave it out without a tender to a group of the rich without almost any payment in return".

The High Court is still hearing a challenge to Israel's Delek Group and Noble's offer of gas monopoly for 15 years.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has fought the apparatchiks in his party, his coalition partners and the bureaucracy for years to get his gas framework agreement approved.

The prospect of exporting gas to Jordan, Egypt and even the Palestinian Authority could help cement Israel's strategic importance in the region, but it was the role of LNG that Woodside was interested in, not so much domgas or pipeline gas to neighbouring companies, or Israel's geopolitical games.

If it had gone ahead with its Leviathan investment, Woodside could have potentially not only have had to park up the cash for an LNG development that no longer seems likely, but risked the ire of protests from the divestment movement, who are appalled at what they say are war crimes in Palestine, and potential corruption headaches, as Israel has been accused of corporate malfeasance.

Activists even said in May that corruption was "institutionalised" after ex-PM Ehud Olmert was sentenced to eight months in prison for illegally accepting more than $US150,000 from a US tycoon while holding a ministerial office.

Last year Transparency International, which measures perception of official corruption, ranked Israel just 37th among 175 countries for corruption, and 24th among the 34 developed economies belonging to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.

The World Bank's own ratings put Israel between Russia and Mongolia as a place to do business.

Coleman played hardball when the Israeli government decided, at the last possible minute, to raise tax issues about the treatment of the Leviathan gas project, so he took the $2.6 billion investment he was planning to put into Israel's first LNG development, and threw away more than a year of hard work negotiating its buy in.

At the time it was a brave decision, and many wondered where Woodside would find its next growth near-term opportunity, a place to park all the cash being thrown off by Pluto.

Even if Australian costs are high, in the end it made a lot more sense to buy an interest in the Wheatstone LNG project and some WA oil assets being sold by US oiler Apache for the same amount, while it tries to get Browse floating LNG to the starting line.

The purchase of Kitimat in Canada's Laird Basin made less sense, but it is a long-term gas play that has fewer headaches than Leviathan, even if it appears now that few, if any, of British Columbia's LNG projects will ever make it to production.

Noble recently said it doesn't expect to make a final investment decision on Leviathan and until next year, at the earliest, five years after Woodside could have entered what was described as an advanced gas project.

And that assumes the Israeli government follows through with a promise to fast-track the project now that a key roadblock in the economy ministry has resigned, allowing Netanyahu to circumvent a ruling of the country's anti-trust commissioner and advance a contentious natural gas deal.

Economy minister Arieh Deri had refused to overrule the antitrust commissioner.

With his recent departure Netanyahu has pushed forward, saying gas will be Israel's "number one growth engine" in the coming years.

But with the discovery of Zohar in Egypt, Leviathan suddenly has 30Tcf more competition on its doorstep, one that is being fast-tracked in a more resource-friendly nation.

The 11Tcf Tamar was found in 2009 and Leviathan, a field almost twice the size, was found a year later, but delays have been constant.

In the years since the discovery of Leviathan there were no real legal restrictions on Noble or Delek, which explains why they went full bore ahead with an LNG-dominated proposal, while policymakers - caught on the hop by the unexpected gas discoveries - scrambled to respond.

First they imposed higher taxes, then the independent antitrust commissioner got involved, ruling that Noble and Delek had a monopoly in Tamar and Leviathan and something needed to be done to force asset sales to foster competition in the Israeli gas market.

There will be price controls imposed on sales to the Israeli market, but former antitrust chief David Gilo was convinced Noble and Delek's position was anti-competitive and would lead to higher prices he stood in the way, until he was recently pushed aside by Netanyahu.

He has not been replaced, and the recently dumped economy minister, Aryeh Deri, refused to sign off on a proposal circumventing Gilo's antitrust ruling.

Earlier this month he too was pushed aside in favour of Netanyahu, who has taken on the ministerial role.

Under Netanyahu's framework Delek must sell its 31% stake in Tamar within six years, and Noble needs to reduce its stake from 36% to 25% in the same time frame.

Noble has also just sold its stake in two undeveloped gas fields in the Eastern Mediterranean to satisfy concerns that it holds too much control over Israel's natural gas resources.

It handed its 47% interest in the Karish and Tanin fields for $100 million to Delek this week, which in turn must sell 100% to a third party within 14 months.

The two small fields contain about 3Tcf of gas.

Eni, Hess and EOG Resources have been identified as potential buyers, Israeli newspaper Globes reported.

Of course, politics is never simple, and even though there are proposed sales to Egypt on the table, the internal ructions within the Knesset's loose ruling coalition continue.

Energy minister Yuval Steinitz has accused leading opponents of the government's gas plan of acting out of populism and not in the public's interest.

In particular, he singled out finance minister Moshe Kahlon and environment minister Avi Gabbay for criticism, for objecting to the plan although they are a part of the government that authorised it.

Steinitz has expressed hope that next year the market will be open to foreign investors to begin searching for more gas, although how much zeal there is for explorers wanting to risk Israel's sovereign and political risk very much rests on how Noble is treated.

He said a leaked, secret report by a European bank called the nation "dangerous than third world countries for energy companies. Even African countries like Angola and Mozambique are a safer investment than Israel."

So, as the evidence mounts, it looks like Coleman's decision to stare down the beast known as Leviathan, and walk away, was a triumph for Woodside, avoiding what could have been a decade-long quagmire that may last several years yet, and with Browse and Greater Sunrise, Woodside already has enough of those.