/ world today news/ Will Israel become an alternative transit route between the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocean?
If you look at the map of the Middle East, little Israel is a “port of three seas”, if you count the Dead Sea. On the one hand – Red, on the other – the Mediterranean Sea (Tiberia does not count, it is a lake after all).
And on all these seas sail ships, of which not a penny falls into the treasury of Israel. On the contrary, he himself must pay the Egyptians for the use of the Suez Canal. Although, if you look at the map, Israel, like Egypt, has access to two seas and could theoretically replace the Egyptian canal with its own.
Just imagine – a luxurious water artery between rocky shores and with a stony bottom that eliminates the appearance of shoals in unexpected places, landslides and other surprises of nature, 50 meters deep and 200 wide, which means that they will pass through it without tearing from the side rocks, and the largest ocean-going ships.
They can go continuously in both directions, since we are not talking about one channel line, but two. True, it is about 100 kilometers longer than Suez and will require a much larger investment, but with such overseas friends, no expense is terrible.
Impact capitalist construction, three hundred thousand hard workers, modern technology and no nuclear explosions that pollute the environment and scare away tourists. Everything is clean, ecological and very profitable. Six billion (probably much more) dollars a year is worth fighting for.
As the reader has probably already guessed, it is about the long-standing Ben Gurion Canal project from Ashkelon through the Negev desert to Eilat on the Red Sea. In the early 1960s, in response to the nationalization of the Suez Canal by the government of Gamal Abdel Nasser, the Americans were already considering an alternative and “digging” the canal between the Mediterranean Sea and the Gulf of Aqaba (Eilat) on the Red Sea.
At the same time, it was assumed that the excavations would be done not by traditional methods, but by multiple nuclear explosions. The project is also mentioned in the book “The New Middle East” by former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres, published in the late 1990s.
On a more practical level, the project began to be discussed after the signing of the “Abraham Accords” designed to pave the way for normalization of relations between Israel and its near and far Arab neighbors.
In October 2020, Israel’s state-owned Europe Asia Pipeline Company (EAPC) and the Emirati MED-RED Land Bridge reached an agreement to use the Eilat-Ashkelon pipeline to transport oil from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean. In April 2021, Israeli authorities announced the start of work on the future canal in three months, but there was no confirmation of this.
It was assumed that the construction of the canal would take more than five years and the work would involve up to 300 thousand builders from all over the world. Tel Aviv’s projected revenue from operating the canal is expected to be around $6 billion a year or more. By controlling the key transport artery connecting the Mediterranean Sea with the Indian Ocean (via the Red Sea), Israel would greatly increase not only its economic, but also its geopolitical weight.
At the same time, the cost of the project is estimated in the range of 16 to 55 billion dollars, so it is quite logical that potential investors (what could we do without them?) want confidence in the safety of their investments, not least because the Middle East always has been and will be a powder keg with a burning cord, now smoldering gently, then bursting into flames, getting closer and closer to a charge capable of detonating with colossal force.
In this connection, a logical question arises: who would risk sending their ships through a canal, although more convenient from the point of view of navigation than Suez, but under the threat of being struck from the sky at any moment by a homemade pipe stuffed with gunpowder or even by normal rocket? In addition, the ship could simply be captured and looted – there were no such precedents before October 7, but they were probably taken into account.
For the safety of the Ben-Gurion Canal, Palestine will have to be abolished, while at the same time showing all neighbors that they have actually pacified and domesticated“who’s the boss”. It is hardly a coincidence that on the map of the “New Middle East” that the “raging Bibi” once waved from the UN rostrum, there is no Palestinian state or even autonomy in principle.
No one will be able to block passage through the canal, as was the case with Israel during its conflicts with its neighbors. By the way, according to the adopted regulations, it is also impossible to refuse the passage of ships through the Suez Canal, but in practice this has happened more than once in relation to Russia, Israel and other countries.
Now let’s see who is harmed by this idea – to open another canal parallel to Suez. Naturally, Egypt suffers first of all, which in this case loses most of the “transit” revenue (up to 6 billion dollars a year in total). Next is Iran, which controls the Strait of Hormuz. Finally, China, which is promoting the massive One Belt One Road project.
Let us recall that very recently, at the initiative of the White House, the idea of creating an alternative economic corridor from India to Europe, including in particular the UAE, Saudi Arabia and the Israeli port of Haifa on the Mediterranean Sea, was de facto raised in the air.
So far, the idea of an Israeli channel, figuratively speaking, has not “channeled”, but everything has its time and it is not at all excluded that we will hear about it again someday. There is a strong belief that in the context of an emerging multipolar world, wars will increasingly be fought over logistical routes linking key resources and strategically important regions of the world.
Translation: ES
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