đź‘‹ Good Wednesday morning in the Middle East!
Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, has been named prime minister, the government announced on Tuesday. The 37-year-old crown prince has been the kingdom’s de facto ruler for years, handling many royal duties in place of his 86-year-old father, King Salman. He has led the government in an ambitious agenda designed to wean the economy off its dependency on oil. He has also been blamed for the October 2018 killing of dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was a columnist for the Washington Post. The prince, widely known as MBS, said in 2019 that he took “full responsibility” for the missteps that led to the killing, but denied ordering it.
The White House today will host a delegation from Israel to launch a new strategic dialogue on technology cooperation. The initiative was part of the “Jerusalem Declaration” that President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid agreed upon during the U.S. leader’s Mideast trip in August. The dialogue will focus on cooperation in fields ranging from artificial intelligence and quantum computing to pandemic preparedness and climate change, according to a statement from Lapid’s office. Leading the Israeli delegation will be Innovation, Science and Technology Minister Orit Farkash-Hacohen and National Security Advisor Eyal Hulata.
Israel’s growing integration with the wider Middle East and North Africa has been paved with business connections, from investment in technology startups to offshore gas reserves in the Mediterranean. One ambitious project is a proposed train line stretching from the Persian Gulf to Israel’s Mediterranean port of Haifa. As The Circuit reports, however, Middle East rail projects have a century-long history of stopping short of their target destinations.
Two years after the Abraham Accords were signed, Israel’s influence has grown throughout the region, according to the annual Arab Youth Survey, which probes the mindset of 18- to 24-year-olds across MENA. But despite rising to be the third most influential country among Arab youth, Israel is still regarded as an enemy by many respondents, despite normalization efforts in the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan.
Couture houses and buyers from around the world will be coming to the UAE next month for Arab Fashion Week. Details below in The Circuit’s culture section, where you’ll also learn about “Cinema Sabaya,” a film about Israeli and Arab amateur filmmakers, which won “Best Film” honors last week at Israel’s annual Ophir Awards.
Welcome to The Weekly Circuit, where we cover the Middle East through a business and cultural lens. Read on for the stories, deals and players at the top of the news. Please send comments and story tips to [email protected].
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CROSSING BORDERS
Gulf-Israel train project chugs into political, financial obstacles
Knitting together the Middle East with a network of train tracks has been a dream of transportation planners for over a century. The vision persists today as part of ongoing efforts to link the six Gulf states through an east-west rail network that would span Saudi Arabia and connect with the Red Sea. However, tying the project to a northern route that leads through Jordan to Israel’s Mediterranean port of Haifa – a notion floated amid the exuberance of the Abraham Accords – is still a long way off, Saeb Rawashdeh reports for The Circuit.
On the shelf: Just as the megaproject was suspended more than 100 years ago, the politics and multibillion-dollar cost involved mean it will probably remain on the shelf for years to come. “The success of a railway link would be dependent on the willingness of Saudi Arabia to support such a project,” RAND Corp. researcher Daniel Egel told The Circuit. “I think that they would have to be incentivized to include Haifa as a primary terminus for the railway” – given the current absence of diplomatic relations with Israel.
Transporting pilgrims: The history of the never-completed Hejaz railroad, which was built by the Ottomans in 1908 so that Muslims from parts of Asia and Europe could make the hajj pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca, is a saga that illustrates the idea’s appeal and serial failures. Designed at the beginning of the 20th century by German engineers, the railway ran some 820 miles (1,320 kilometers) of rocky desert trail from Damascus to Medina, Islam’s second holiest city, stopping 220 miles short of Mecca. It wasn’t until four years ago that Saudi Arabia built the high-speed Haramain rail line connecting the two sacred sites at a cost of about $16 billion. By then, the Hejaz was a tin-can artifact with no connection across the Saudi border.
Complete overhaul: A renewed Hejaz would require that the decrepit railbed be completely replaced with modern infrastructure and has been under Jordanian government review for 11 years. Across the border, Israel started pitching its “Tracks for Regional Peace” initiative in 2018 to connect Israel with its Arab neighbors. It sought to promote the plan two years later when the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain agreed to normalize relations through the U.S.-brokered Abraham Accords.
Land bridge: The idea was to use the new railway Israel built between Haifa and its eastern town of Beit She’an, extend it to the Jordanian border and connect to an overhauled Hejaz. From there it would cross into Saudi Arabia and end up in Dubai connecting the Mediterranean with the Persian Gulf. The regional railway network would transport cargo and tourists, providing a regional network that would include Jordan, the Palestinian Authority, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and the other member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council. Annual trade flow through the land bridge, it was estimated, could reach $250 billion by 2030.
Economic viability: If relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia change and rail links became acceptable, the project would still face significant challenges and have to prove its economic viability. “It comes up from time to time,” said Ben Moore, an Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman. “If we sign for peace, it could be considered.”
Read the full story here.
