Israel moving forward with plans for railway that could reach from Haifa to the Persian Gulf

From Globes:

Last week's announcement by the Ministry of Transport that the rail link from "Haifa Bay to the Persian Gulf" was officially moving ahead in the National Planning Commission remained under the media radar.

The idea of such a link was first raised in 2017 by the then Minister of Transport Israel Katz who has continued promoting the plan before international organizations in his brief stint as minister of foreign affairs under the name "The Peace Railway." But now operative measures are being taken including depositing a plan for expanding and extending the existing Haifa - Beit Shean rail link on to the nearby Jordanian border at an estimated cost of NIS 3.5 billion.

...

The idea of such mega-railway projects was revived by the Chinese government, which is striving for a 'silk railroad' connecting Asia and Europe and over the past decade has injected hundreds of billions of dollars in building a transcontinental railway. The railway has played a vital role in trade during the Covid-19 crisis with international aviation and shipping routes disrupted.

Now the countries of the Middle East have discovered that rehabilitating their railways and integrating them into the overall plan of the Chinese government, opens up new trade opportunities connecting Europe, Asia and the Persian Gulf.

The article goes into some detail, plus emphasizing the political roadblocks to such a project. Part of the incentive for China is that a Chinese firm is building and will be operating the Haifa Bayport container terminal, and China wants to use rail lines to trade goods via the Mediterranean. The Israeli decision to award that port to the Chinese has been controversial.

(h/t Daniel)

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