Israel's Dream of an alternative route to the Suez Canal

September 2023: During the G20 meeting held in New Delhi,  Indian PM Modi showcased the so-called India- Middle East-Europe Corridor, his latest venture in a series of India’s feverish attempts to achieve regional connectivity outside China’s Road & Belt Initiative. Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, announced that the projected Corridor will boost trade, enhance energy transportation, and further improve digital connectivity among the user nations. It would benefit India, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Israel, and the European Union. The project has America’s blessings.

India has been severely hindered from expanding Westward, into Afghanistan and Central Asia and thence towards Europe, as virtually all of the land-based trade routes from India to Europe go through Pakistan, India’s archrival. In the past, India tried to establish a sea-based trade route to Western and Central Asia via Chabahar port that would allow India to bypass Pakistan and establish trade networks with the countries in these regions.

The port of Chabahar, next to Gwadar, was central to India’s intentions of breaking out into Central Asia via Chah Bahar. India and Iran agreed to develop Chabahar in 2003 but the venture moved slowly because of the sanctions over Iran’s nuclear programme. In the past, India, Iran, and Russia also talked about creating a Russo-Iranian- Indian transport corridor.

In 2017, Modi inaugurated an Air Freight Corridor between India and Afghanistan. Afghanistan mainly sends fresh and dried fruits, vegetables, and oilseeds to India. It imports light manufactured goods like pharmaceuticals, water purifiers, and medical equipment from India. The Air Freight Corridor passes through Pakistan’s airspace and can be blocked by Pakistan during hostilities with India.

The proposed India - Middle East – Europe Corridor is seen as a rival to CPEC. It will consist of two separate routes: the Eastern Route will link the port of Mundra on India’s West coast to Fujairah port and then transport goods through containers to the Israeli port of Haifa using the railroad via Saudi Arabia and Jordan. The Western Route will start at Piraeus in Greece, traverse the Mediterranean, enter the Middle East at Haifa, and thereafter follow the same alignment as the Eastern Route.

There will be uninterrupted oil/gas pipelines linking the eastern and western terminuses at Mundra and Piraeus respectively. The ships carrying merchandise will load/unload at least at four destinations - Piraeus, Haifa, Fujairah, and the Indian ports on the Gujarat coast (Modi’s home state). Mumbai, as shown on the map, will be a secondary Indian destination.

Presently, shipping between India and Europe takes place through the Suez Canal, without the hassle of loading/unloading at intermediate destinations.  Since 2020, a joint Israel- UAE pipeline has been operational. However, it transports only a fraction of oil exported by UAE to Israel It takes Indian shipping 28 days to transport goods between Mumbai and Europe via the Suez Canal.   It is claimed that the Middle East Corridor will reduce the time to 16 days. We don't know if this takes into account the time spent in loading/ unloading at intermediate destinations, congestion at the ports, and unforeseen factors. Navigation through the Suez Canal has its limitations. In the last week of March 2021, a Chinese container ship heading for Rotterdam was struck between the opposite banks of the Canal., resulting in blocking the Canal and disrupting the global supply chain for more than a week.

The Zionist leaders, since before the establishment of Israel, talked about some sort of a link between the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. In “Altneuland” (Old New Land), the novel written by Theodore Herzl in 1902, he envisioned a project to pump seawater from the Mediterranean to the Dead Sea and utilize the 400-meter gradient between the two to generate electricity. Herzl was a visionary and his proposed pipeline remained a pipe dream for technical reasons – the project was considered unfeasible as it would generate not more than 300 megawatts of electricity at the Dead Sea.

In July 1963, the US Department of Energy at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory created a classified document that outlined a plan to use 520 underground nuclear explosions to excavate and blast a canal through the Judean Hills in Israel’s Negev Desert.  The document was declassified in 1993. The plan was dropped due to its ecological, political, and financial costs.

In 2012, the Israeli cabinet approved an alternate plan to construct a cargo rail link between the Israeli Red Sea port of Eilath and the port of Ashdod on the Mediterranean. The plan envisaged shipping cargo from India and ASEAN countries to Eilath, unloading it at Eilath, and transporting the cargo by railway to Israel’s Mediterranean ports at Ashkelon, Ashdod, and Haifa. This plan was also dropped because 1) The entire coastline between Eilath / Aqaba and the Egyptian tourist resort at Taba is 13. 5 km, not enough to create the overland infrastructure for handling large cargoes;2) Eilath and the Israeli ports on the Mediterranean are working at their maximum capacity. Any further expansion will only result in longer waiting lines.   

The proposed corridor will heavily bank upon Israel's Mediterranean ports, particularly Haifa, for the two-way transportation of freight between India and Europe. We have discussed that the Israeli ports have exhausted their capacity for further expansion. 

                                                                   Saleem Akhtar Malik

7 October 2023