The number of foreign countries maintaining research and development facilities in Israel, is impressive. An apocryphal story is that of physicist Dov Frohman. He had worked successfully for a number of years at an American Intel facility. Frohman decided to return home to Israel, The Intel management opened an R & D facility to keep Frohman at Intel. The move was highly successful, as Intel became Israel's largest exporter.
The number of foreign R & D facilities increased rapidly and soon afterwards IBM came to Israel as did General Electric. In order to take advantage of Israeli technologic expertise Israeli companies were acquired The most recent of the was Apple. Google has just opened an R & D facility.
Many foreign companies take a short route and opt out for mergers an d acquisitions rather than go the research and development route