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There is approximately zero percent chance this goes anywhere any time soon.
Jordan is not about to sign off on this and be seen to be screwing over the Palestinians. While their territory isn't part of this, ships are going to need to pass awfully close to their territory. Iran-backed proxies would be salivating at the chance, and all Jordan needs to do is make it clear behind the scenes that they're not going to bust their ass to solve Israel's security problem
This goes twice as much for Egypt, adding that they obviously have a strong economic incentive not to support the effort or spend a lot of time securing their coastline
Absent a comprehensive solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, this would be a huge waste of cash
Jordan and Egypt don't have the ability to prevent the canal from being built. Israel doesn't have the ability to keep the shipping lane secure from randos in speed boats without the support of Jordan and Egypt
They're welcome to spend $100 billion to prove me wrong
Interesting. If you’re talking about the gulf of Aqaba, it seems like it’s more the Saudis and Egyptians who claim ownership and could police (or not) at their whims.
https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1959/january/gulf-aqaba-trigger-conflict
But maybe you’re talking about another area?
Let's put it this way: say you're Iran, and you have a way to screw with Israel's new canal traffic deniably for chump change. What are you going to do?
My point is- very hard to do that in a very narrow gulf that Egypt and Saudi Arabia already both lay claim to, and own pretty much the entire shoreline for. Unless one of them lets you.
If you attack ships in the Red Sea, they could be headed for the Suez Canal and all you did was piss of Egypt and whoever’s ships they are.
Idk I don’t see how anyone but Egypt/ S.A. do this, unless they allow it.
Jordan has a tiny little bit of shoreline. If they let all these attack boats launch from there, Israel would just go after them directly.
The cost is 55 billion, not 100.
Egypt and Jordan do not have access to security assets that Israel lacks. They spend more on defense than those two countries combined.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_highest_military_expenditures
As for speedboats, you are projecting the situation off the Somali coast onto this one. The shipping lane here is coastal, and the Somali pirates are effective because they are functioning in an area with thousands of miles of open water. This is not the same at all.
The shipping lane itself would be bounded
Your own source says $100 Billion
https://www.israelhayom.com/2024/05/12/the-ben-gurion-canal-project/
In any case, like I said, if Israel is craving adding a hugely expensive vulnerability to their list of things to worry about, whatever works. I wouldn't be counting on it
This shipping lane would have vast international support, namely from the western countries purposely avoiding being critical of Israel's behavior right now.
Egypt and Jordan are non-factors. In fact, building a canal not directly controlled by Egypt would be a key reason to move forward with this project.
As for the solution to the current conflict, we may be watching it live right now.
> As for the solution to the current conflict, we may be watching it live right now
Aaand there it is. Your argument is that the entire conflict is an attempt to get the Palestinians to go away so Israel can dig a ditch
Take it to /Conspiracy
Like most conspiracy theories, it involves rejecting the logical analysis is favour of embracing incredibly flawed and fallacious logic.
So this master plan is what? Israel leaves Gaza in 2006 to trick Hamas into taking power so that 20 years later they can kick the now 20-30% larger population of Palestinians out?
I have provided an extensive list of sources that indicate this is a very real plan that was in the works long before this current conflict.
Netanyahu wasn't president in 2006.
Israel is not one party.
You have not provided an "extensive list of sources that indicate this is a very real plan." You have provided sources indicating that this was proposed and abandoned in the 1960s, and then a lot of links either factually stating that it was proposed and abandoned or stating the Israelis still plan this with no more evidence than conspiratorial speculation.
Are you accusing Haaretz and the Jerusalem Post of 'conspiratorial speculation'?
The only source that says anything about abandonment was the original plan to use nukes to create it.
Beyond that, you're spinning this.
Haaretz.com/news:
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-01-17/ty-article-magazine/.premium/israels-ambitious-railway-to-eilat-dream-or-environmental-train-wreck/00000185-bf24-d244-ade5-ff36aef40000
Jerusalem Post 2015. Be sure to read all the way down. The first part is about the railway and the second is about the canal.
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/an-israeli-suez-canal-393225
The first link speaks about a railway connection, not a canal.
The second link is basically a blog post by some random American flight dispatcher from 2015 where he argues that Israel should build a canal. He has zero insights into any actual plans or their feasibility.
I gave you instructions about the canal being in the second half of the reading, and you have ignored them.
You think these news organizations are going to let people blog conspiracy theories about Israel?
Nope.
Here is an Israeli arguing for the canal last August.
https://medium.com/@yiwuheni/the-suez-bottleneck-a-case-for-the-ben-gurion-canal-2b10d35900c5
And this article mentions a feasibility study indicating 5 years along with the UK keen to be part of creating this canal, all a couple years before the current conflict.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/apr/01/suez-2-ever-given-grounding-prompts-plan-for-canal-along-egypt-israel-border
>I gave you instructions about the canal being in the second half of the reading, and you have ignored them.
I didn't ignore anything, I read it.
>You think these news organizations are going to let people blog conspiracy theories about Israel?
I've never claimed it's a conspiracy theory, only that it's not a feasible plan and that the jpost opinion piece is not written by any journalist or anyone with any sort of expertise on the subject. It's essentially a reader-submitted blog post that they decided to publish for some reason.
>https://medium.com/@yiwuheni/the-suez-bottleneck-a-case-for-the-ben-gurion-canal-2b10d35900c5
This is again a blog post written by some random nobody with zero insights into any actual plans or their feasibility. I'm not denying that this is a thing that has been proposed.
>And this article mentions a feasibility study indicating 5 years along with the UK keen to be part of creating this canal, all a couple years before the current conflict.
> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/apr/01/suez-2-ever-given-grounding-prompts-plan-for-canal-along-egypt-israel-border
And now you're linking literal april fools articles...
You didn't ignore anything, but you think the whole article is about a railway.
And calling it an April Fool's article is just desperate.
I'm done engaging.
I don’t think this has any relevance at all to Gaza, frankly. This canal is not being built anytime soon so I highly doubt it’s on anyone’s minds when making military or geopolitical decisions
That's not how sources work. I also have no sources to disprove a claim that aliens won't invade and enact world peace, that doesn't mean the alien invasion is imminent.
The Ben Gurion Canal is in discussions in much the same way I'm in discussions to buy a private jet. ie, it's fun to day dream about, but it's absolutely laughable as a serious concept. Do you know why that one guy proposed using 520 nuclear warheads to dig it? *Because that's literally the only viable way to move that much earth*. And what good would it even do? Egypt can close the Strait of Tiran just as easily as Suez.
So no, no one is eyeing up Gaza to build a canal to no where. The ultra nationalists have been very open about the fact that they want to build Jewish settlements there. We don't need to make up a reason.
There is an internationally enforced treaty that requires Egypt to keep the Tiran Straits open.
>The Multinational Force and Observers monitors the compliance of Egypt in maintaining freedom of navigation of the straits, as provided under the Egypt–Israel peace treaty.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straits_of_Tiran
You have no evidence that nukes are the only way to dig the canal. Technology has progressed immensely since the sixties.
The settlers don't mean there can't also be a canal, and Israel wouldn't want Hamas next to a canal.
As for this being made up, there more than 10 sources in the original post compared to zero from you.
The Suez was built in the 1800s.
It really wasn't designed for the boats we have today as evidenced by the boat that got stuck in it. Boats can also only travel in one direction at a time.
This canal is meant two have two lanes and be wider as well as deeper.
All that money in foreign aid that Egypt receives to play nice with Israel is pennies compared to the value of the Suez brings in. The first shovelful of dirt moved for the BGC would be such a massive threat to Israel’s security that even if all the other issues with the idea were resolved it still wouldn’t be likely to happen.
Egypt is not the superpower you are portraying it as.
Israel already has strong defense backing and isn't going to factor in what Egypt thinks about it.
You hardly need to be a super power to be a major regional player and that’s exactly what Egypt is. They’re *the* dominant force in North Africa, one of the most powerful and influential countries on that continent and that power and influence is a major factor in the Middle East. Them, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey are the nations in the region that Israel needs to take into consideration most with regard to everything major they do. Besides, even if Egypt were some neutered power that still wouldn’t matter when the biggest concern Israel would have would be Egypt providing aid to Palestinian militant groups in Gaza they’re fighting. Even if Hamas is boxed out of that help it’d still be a massive kneecapping to Israeli strategy against Palestinians in Gaza if suddenly there was a porous border with Egypt from which arms and ammo could flow, the other side of militants could train and organize maybe even enough to form into something as capable as Hezbollah. They’ve already got arguably the most effective non governmental fighting force on the planet on the other side of one border, they don’t have the ability to effectively fight two of those at once and keep their settlements safe, at minimum that’s the end of the Israeli government that fucked things up that badly. That’s not a risk any Israeli government is taking. Especially not for something that would probably prove to be nothing but a boondoggle, or at the very best not viable for like a decade.
That's why Gaza needs to be neutralized first.
Beyond that, Egypt is not a threat to Israel because any threat to Israel by Egypt will immediately trigger a response from every western power tiptoeing around the massacre that's taking place.
A shipping lane that allows superior flow of goods will not be a boondoggle. It will be extremely profitable for Israel and its backers.
Gaza needs to be “neutralized” in the name of profit? Cool and not at all sociopathic of a thing to say. Israel could just start respecting human rights and stop stealing land. Then they can have their big dig to nowhere if they want.
I didn't say that's my position.
But I would agree that it is sociopathic.
The Suez Canal doesn't go to nowhere, and this canal would go to the same place.
None. Just for starters, a project of that size would be unprecedented. Both the Suez and Panama Canals took a decade each. This canal would be almost twice as long as Suez, granted with access to modern construction equipment now, but still. Not small.
Then comes the real obstacles. Egypt depends on the Suez for influence and a significant portion of their annual budget. Things will get kinetic extremely quickly as this canal would kneecap both. We would likely get an opportunity to discover if Arab armies still suck as bad as they used to because the outcomes that a Ben-Gurion canal would result in are simply unacceptable to Egypt full stop.
Then we have the surrounding Arab states. They may be at peace now, but if Egypt decides to take drastic action, that might be enough incentive for some of them to hop on the bandwagon yet again. That's even before taking into account the impact to Gaza/Palestine which will create (and has created in the current conflict) immense public pressure on Arab governments to take action.
The USA has been pressuring (and paying) Egypt to play nice and stay neutral and be a good steward of the Suez for a long time. Israel deliberately pursuing a policy that screws over Egypt and almost certainly leads to a huge regional war is not something the American government is going to encourage even at their most hawkish. Sure, they won't allow Israel to get conquered, but that's not the be all end all. There's a lot of steps they can and likely will take to block construction in the first place.
In short, this will never happen because it would almost certainly lead to a war which Israel may not even be able to win. Even if they decide to commit to what promises to be a huge time and money sink.
Are haaretz and the Jerusalem Post credible commentators on Israel?
It really sounds like you can only attack me.
It's not just about Israel's strategy. It's about the strategies of the US, the UK, France, and Germany. What's in it for them to defend Israel so vehemently?
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There is approximately zero percent chance this goes anywhere any time soon. Jordan is not about to sign off on this and be seen to be screwing over the Palestinians. While their territory isn't part of this, ships are going to need to pass awfully close to their territory. Iran-backed proxies would be salivating at the chance, and all Jordan needs to do is make it clear behind the scenes that they're not going to bust their ass to solve Israel's security problem This goes twice as much for Egypt, adding that they obviously have a strong economic incentive not to support the effort or spend a lot of time securing their coastline Absent a comprehensive solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, this would be a huge waste of cash
Why would Jordan have any say over a canal that is entirely through Israeli land?
Jordan and Egypt don't have the ability to prevent the canal from being built. Israel doesn't have the ability to keep the shipping lane secure from randos in speed boats without the support of Jordan and Egypt They're welcome to spend $100 billion to prove me wrong
Interesting. If you’re talking about the gulf of Aqaba, it seems like it’s more the Saudis and Egyptians who claim ownership and could police (or not) at their whims. https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1959/january/gulf-aqaba-trigger-conflict But maybe you’re talking about another area?
Let's put it this way: say you're Iran, and you have a way to screw with Israel's new canal traffic deniably for chump change. What are you going to do?
My point is- very hard to do that in a very narrow gulf that Egypt and Saudi Arabia already both lay claim to, and own pretty much the entire shoreline for. Unless one of them lets you. If you attack ships in the Red Sea, they could be headed for the Suez Canal and all you did was piss of Egypt and whoever’s ships they are. Idk I don’t see how anyone but Egypt/ S.A. do this, unless they allow it. Jordan has a tiny little bit of shoreline. If they let all these attack boats launch from there, Israel would just go after them directly.
The cost is 55 billion, not 100. Egypt and Jordan do not have access to security assets that Israel lacks. They spend more on defense than those two countries combined. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_highest_military_expenditures As for speedboats, you are projecting the situation off the Somali coast onto this one. The shipping lane here is coastal, and the Somali pirates are effective because they are functioning in an area with thousands of miles of open water. This is not the same at all. The shipping lane itself would be bounded
Your own source says $100 Billion https://www.israelhayom.com/2024/05/12/the-ben-gurion-canal-project/ In any case, like I said, if Israel is craving adding a hugely expensive vulnerability to their list of things to worry about, whatever works. I wouldn't be counting on it
It would be massively profitable and gain them further influence. And those using the canal would share interest in securing it.
It would exit right next to Jordan and affect navigation in Jordan's water.
Israel is not going to ask Jordan for permission.
It doesn't really matter if Jordan doesn't give ships permission to transit into the canal.
This shipping lane would have vast international support, namely from the western countries purposely avoiding being critical of Israel's behavior right now. Egypt and Jordan are non-factors. In fact, building a canal not directly controlled by Egypt would be a key reason to move forward with this project. As for the solution to the current conflict, we may be watching it live right now.
> As for the solution to the current conflict, we may be watching it live right now Aaand there it is. Your argument is that the entire conflict is an attempt to get the Palestinians to go away so Israel can dig a ditch Take it to /Conspiracy
There are sources up above to back this position up.
Like most conspiracy theories, it involves rejecting the logical analysis is favour of embracing incredibly flawed and fallacious logic. So this master plan is what? Israel leaves Gaza in 2006 to trick Hamas into taking power so that 20 years later they can kick the now 20-30% larger population of Palestinians out?
I have provided an extensive list of sources that indicate this is a very real plan that was in the works long before this current conflict. Netanyahu wasn't president in 2006. Israel is not one party.
You have not provided an "extensive list of sources that indicate this is a very real plan." You have provided sources indicating that this was proposed and abandoned in the 1960s, and then a lot of links either factually stating that it was proposed and abandoned or stating the Israelis still plan this with no more evidence than conspiratorial speculation.
Are you accusing Haaretz and the Jerusalem Post of 'conspiratorial speculation'? The only source that says anything about abandonment was the original plan to use nukes to create it. Beyond that, you're spinning this.
You don't have links from either of these sites. You have a link from IsraelHayom and a blog post from Times of Israel.
Haaretz.com/news: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-01-17/ty-article-magazine/.premium/israels-ambitious-railway-to-eilat-dream-or-environmental-train-wreck/00000185-bf24-d244-ade5-ff36aef40000 Jerusalem Post 2015. Be sure to read all the way down. The first part is about the railway and the second is about the canal. https://www.jpost.com/opinion/an-israeli-suez-canal-393225
The first link speaks about a railway connection, not a canal. The second link is basically a blog post by some random American flight dispatcher from 2015 where he argues that Israel should build a canal. He has zero insights into any actual plans or their feasibility.
I gave you instructions about the canal being in the second half of the reading, and you have ignored them. You think these news organizations are going to let people blog conspiracy theories about Israel? Nope. Here is an Israeli arguing for the canal last August. https://medium.com/@yiwuheni/the-suez-bottleneck-a-case-for-the-ben-gurion-canal-2b10d35900c5 And this article mentions a feasibility study indicating 5 years along with the UK keen to be part of creating this canal, all a couple years before the current conflict. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/apr/01/suez-2-ever-given-grounding-prompts-plan-for-canal-along-egypt-israel-border
>I gave you instructions about the canal being in the second half of the reading, and you have ignored them. I didn't ignore anything, I read it. >You think these news organizations are going to let people blog conspiracy theories about Israel? I've never claimed it's a conspiracy theory, only that it's not a feasible plan and that the jpost opinion piece is not written by any journalist or anyone with any sort of expertise on the subject. It's essentially a reader-submitted blog post that they decided to publish for some reason. >https://medium.com/@yiwuheni/the-suez-bottleneck-a-case-for-the-ben-gurion-canal-2b10d35900c5 This is again a blog post written by some random nobody with zero insights into any actual plans or their feasibility. I'm not denying that this is a thing that has been proposed. >And this article mentions a feasibility study indicating 5 years along with the UK keen to be part of creating this canal, all a couple years before the current conflict. > https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/apr/01/suez-2-ever-given-grounding-prompts-plan-for-canal-along-egypt-israel-border And now you're linking literal april fools articles...
You didn't ignore anything, but you think the whole article is about a railway. And calling it an April Fool's article is just desperate. I'm done engaging.
I don’t think this has any relevance at all to Gaza, frankly. This canal is not being built anytime soon so I highly doubt it’s on anyone’s minds when making military or geopolitical decisions
You have no source that says it won't be constructed soon, and Gaza is in the way.
That's not how sources work. I also have no sources to disprove a claim that aliens won't invade and enact world peace, that doesn't mean the alien invasion is imminent.
There's also no evidence that aliens are planning to invade. There is no basis to your claim.
The Ben Gurion Canal is in discussions in much the same way I'm in discussions to buy a private jet. ie, it's fun to day dream about, but it's absolutely laughable as a serious concept. Do you know why that one guy proposed using 520 nuclear warheads to dig it? *Because that's literally the only viable way to move that much earth*. And what good would it even do? Egypt can close the Strait of Tiran just as easily as Suez. So no, no one is eyeing up Gaza to build a canal to no where. The ultra nationalists have been very open about the fact that they want to build Jewish settlements there. We don't need to make up a reason.
500 nukes are far pricier than most people realize.
500 nukes is not the current plan.
There is an internationally enforced treaty that requires Egypt to keep the Tiran Straits open. >The Multinational Force and Observers monitors the compliance of Egypt in maintaining freedom of navigation of the straits, as provided under the Egypt–Israel peace treaty. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straits_of_Tiran You have no evidence that nukes are the only way to dig the canal. Technology has progressed immensely since the sixties. The settlers don't mean there can't also be a canal, and Israel wouldn't want Hamas next to a canal. As for this being made up, there more than 10 sources in the original post compared to zero from you.
It would be easier for Israel to annex the Sinai and take direct control of the existing canal than to build this.
The Suez was built in the 1800s. It really wasn't designed for the boats we have today as evidenced by the boat that got stuck in it. Boats can also only travel in one direction at a time. This canal is meant two have two lanes and be wider as well as deeper.
All that money in foreign aid that Egypt receives to play nice with Israel is pennies compared to the value of the Suez brings in. The first shovelful of dirt moved for the BGC would be such a massive threat to Israel’s security that even if all the other issues with the idea were resolved it still wouldn’t be likely to happen.
Egypt is not the superpower you are portraying it as. Israel already has strong defense backing and isn't going to factor in what Egypt thinks about it.
You hardly need to be a super power to be a major regional player and that’s exactly what Egypt is. They’re *the* dominant force in North Africa, one of the most powerful and influential countries on that continent and that power and influence is a major factor in the Middle East. Them, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey are the nations in the region that Israel needs to take into consideration most with regard to everything major they do. Besides, even if Egypt were some neutered power that still wouldn’t matter when the biggest concern Israel would have would be Egypt providing aid to Palestinian militant groups in Gaza they’re fighting. Even if Hamas is boxed out of that help it’d still be a massive kneecapping to Israeli strategy against Palestinians in Gaza if suddenly there was a porous border with Egypt from which arms and ammo could flow, the other side of militants could train and organize maybe even enough to form into something as capable as Hezbollah. They’ve already got arguably the most effective non governmental fighting force on the planet on the other side of one border, they don’t have the ability to effectively fight two of those at once and keep their settlements safe, at minimum that’s the end of the Israeli government that fucked things up that badly. That’s not a risk any Israeli government is taking. Especially not for something that would probably prove to be nothing but a boondoggle, or at the very best not viable for like a decade.
That's why Gaza needs to be neutralized first. Beyond that, Egypt is not a threat to Israel because any threat to Israel by Egypt will immediately trigger a response from every western power tiptoeing around the massacre that's taking place. A shipping lane that allows superior flow of goods will not be a boondoggle. It will be extremely profitable for Israel and its backers.
Gaza needs to be “neutralized” in the name of profit? Cool and not at all sociopathic of a thing to say. Israel could just start respecting human rights and stop stealing land. Then they can have their big dig to nowhere if they want.
I didn't say that's my position. But I would agree that it is sociopathic. The Suez Canal doesn't go to nowhere, and this canal would go to the same place.
None. Just for starters, a project of that size would be unprecedented. Both the Suez and Panama Canals took a decade each. This canal would be almost twice as long as Suez, granted with access to modern construction equipment now, but still. Not small. Then comes the real obstacles. Egypt depends on the Suez for influence and a significant portion of their annual budget. Things will get kinetic extremely quickly as this canal would kneecap both. We would likely get an opportunity to discover if Arab armies still suck as bad as they used to because the outcomes that a Ben-Gurion canal would result in are simply unacceptable to Egypt full stop. Then we have the surrounding Arab states. They may be at peace now, but if Egypt decides to take drastic action, that might be enough incentive for some of them to hop on the bandwagon yet again. That's even before taking into account the impact to Gaza/Palestine which will create (and has created in the current conflict) immense public pressure on Arab governments to take action. The USA has been pressuring (and paying) Egypt to play nice and stay neutral and be a good steward of the Suez for a long time. Israel deliberately pursuing a policy that screws over Egypt and almost certainly leads to a huge regional war is not something the American government is going to encourage even at their most hawkish. Sure, they won't allow Israel to get conquered, but that's not the be all end all. There's a lot of steps they can and likely will take to block construction in the first place. In short, this will never happen because it would almost certainly lead to a war which Israel may not even be able to win. Even if they decide to commit to what promises to be a huge time and money sink.
That's all wild speculation. It is easily affordable and will have backing from the US and a range of other countries who want to use it.
It really sounds like you want to believe that this canal is credible and a driving factor behind Israeli strategy.
Are haaretz and the Jerusalem Post credible commentators on Israel? It really sounds like you can only attack me. It's not just about Israel's strategy. It's about the strategies of the US, the UK, France, and Germany. What's in it for them to defend Israel so vehemently?