Once upon a time, patents only became public upon issuance. Then someone realized that it might be good if patent applications were published earlier in the patenting process. Among other things, early publication allows companies to see what their competitors are up to, and to decide whether or not to divert resources away from a project that might be blocked from commercialization by a competitor's patent, or to focus on a different aspect of an already-underway project in order to avoid potential infringement. Nowadays most regimes publish patent applications, or make them available for public inspection, 18 months after the earliest filing date.
The US and Israel were both relatively late adopters of the 18-month publication system. The US only began 18 month publication in March 2001, and to this day it maintains the old no-publication-until-grant system, which applicants who only file in the US can avail themselves of. Israel only went to 18-month publication in 2012, although prior to that (and until today) it published minimal details of patent application shortly after filing: title of the application, applicant, filing date and, if relevant, priority claims and relevant PCT information.
In the US, a patentee can in principle collected damages for infringement of a claim of a published application, provided that (a) the invention claimed in the patent is "substantially the same" as the invention claimed in the published application (see 35 USC 154(d)), and (b) the infringer has actual notice of the pendency of the claim (and the issuance of the patent). Although I have heard of cases in which damages for such infringement were claimed, I have yet to see case in which such damages were actually awarded.
Both the US and Israel also have mechanisms for expediting the prosecution of certain patent applications, e.g. based on the inventor's age, subject matter (e.g. so-called "green" applications in Israel), applicant's commercial situation (imminent infringement, in Israel) or just by paying additional money to have the application fast-tracked ("Track 1" in the USA).
In one of Carl Oppedahl's listservs, US Patent Agent Louise Sheriker recently reported about US patent no. 10,850,674. The application was filed on June 24, 2019, as the first filing worldwide, and the patent granted on December 1, 2020 - less than 18 months after the application. You would think that would be the end of the story, since the early grant of the patent obviates the benefits of early publication, but no: on December 24, 2020 - exactly 18 months after filing - the USPTO again published the application, as publication no. 20200398762. There were eight claims, with one independent claim, claim 21; the only difference from the claims granted in the patent 23 days earlier was that the patent claims were re-ordered and re-numbered 1-8.
So why did the USPTO re-publish the application after grant? Presumably, since the situation in which the patent issues before 18 months from the earliest priority have passed, the USPTO's computer system isn't set up to detect cases in which the patent issue first and thus to stop the 18-month publication of the application. This is reflected in the PAIR entry, which lists the December 24 date as "earliest publication date". It's true that having both publications facilitates easier comparison of the application and the granted patent, but the 18-month publication includes claim amendments made prior to publication (as was the case here), so the later publication of the application isn't necessarily so useful, and in an event, on can (and should) look at the Image File Wrapper to see all changes (along with arguments) that were made during prosecution.
The USPTO's database does not readily facilitate searches that would allow one to catch similar instances of patent-grant-before-application-publication; one would need to pull data into a separate database and then construct a search query that would detect, e.g., a patent date before the publication date. The same is true of the Israel PTO database.