Last week, U.S. President Biden took a break from discussing Israel to hold a press conference with the Australian Prime Minister on bilateral security and economic coordination. One reporter asked if China was a trustworthy partner for Australia. Biden responded with a vision set to compete with China’s Belt and Road. “We want to — for example, the G — at the G20, we were able to act on a proposal I had to bring — to build a railroad all the way from Riyadh, all the way through the Middle East, Saudi Arabia, Israel, up through Greece, and then across the — not the railroad, but pipeline across the — the Mediterranean up into Europe.”
Smoother in text than video, the rambling comment circulated in isolation. Was this an inopportune sign of mental decline? It sounded fantastical and geographically ridiculous. Apart from its distance from Australia and the U.S., how could the length between India and Greece be bridged, not through Iran or Turkey, but Saudi Arabia and Israel?
But with no notes or teleprompter, Biden got this one right. A plan was announced at the G20 in early September: the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC). The MoU is light on details but describes communications cables, shipping lanes and pipelines through the Indian Ocean and Mediterranean and a rail line stretching from the UAE through Saudi Arabia and Jordan to Israel.
Israel has been floating the idea of a line across Jordan and Saudi Arabia for years. And were it ever to come, it wouldn’t be the first to connect these lands. Over a century ago, before the partition of the Levant and colonization of Palestine, the Hejaz Railway tied present-day Syria, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia together with a fork meeting the sea at Haifa, Palestine
Built through harsh desert terrain, the railway projected Ottoman military power into distant reaches of its territory and eased the journey of hajj pilgrims making their way towards Mecca. Much like the current corridor proposed, the empire sold a vision of economic prosperity and human connection to a public wary of its presence. The economic claims were never fully tested. The rail was destroyed in 1917, just nine years after its completion.
Today, the rail is most famous as a symbol of the Middle Eastern arena of World War I, with scenes of T.E. Lawrence exploding sections of the line holding a place in the Western imaginary. The rail could not stand if the Ottomans were to go and if their lands were to be divided into colonial holdings.
Jordan has long spoken of reviving the Hejaz Railway to connect itself to its Arab neighbors. The funding has never come through. The Washington Post reported the IMEC announcement “solidified a preliminary agreement among a range of participants — including the United States, India, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Israel, the United Arab Emirates and the European Union.” Neither a member nor a guest at the G20, Jordan was not included in the MoU despite being mentioned in its text. Its acquiescence to turning its land over to the rail seems to be taken a given. Jordan has made no public statement acknowledging the project.
India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor
The Levant is still a hub for goods passing between the Gulf and the Mediterranean. In Jordan, the infrastructure is poor. On the Mudawwara Highway, which parallels the old tracks up from Saudi Arabia, camels wander across lanes barely the width of two lorries put against one another. Aside from the dangers, the industry has been vulnerable to the dramatic gas taxes the government regularly passes to finance its debt. Trade came to a standstill last winter as truckers bitterly demonstrated. Trains pose a safer, greener, and more affordable alternative.
Saudi Arabia Railways and the UAE’s Etihad Rail have taken the lead in moving the peninsula towards rail connectivity. When the remaining gap between the two systems closes, the resulting line will reach from the Indian Ocean port of Fujairah to the border of Jordan at al-Haditha.
Israel has also invested heavily in rail. At the Beit Sein station, the coastal network reaches over the West Bank exactly towards the Saudi line. This branch provides direct access to the seaport at Haifa. Biden’s geography starts to seem less farfetched, and the rail like a feasible means to bypass the wait times and instabilities of shipping through the Suez Canal. All that’s needed is barely 100 miles of Jordanian rail.
But can those miles be built? Jordan has no money for it, but to tie up a Saudi-Israeli deal, finances could be found. Other concerns, for once, loom larger. Biden is aware. As he describes the corridor set to rival the Chinese, the reporter interjects, “So you’re the more reliable partner? In terms of when you say you’re going to deliver something, the US and its partners deliver things?” Instead of arguing Western competency over China, Biden turns immediately to the defense of the IMEC and the geopolitical vulnerabilities at its core. Unprompted, he argues the plan is in Saudi Arabia’s interest. Jordan, still, goes unmentioned.
The looming normalization between Saudi-Israel set the scene for the IMEC proposal. Saudi is the main prize of the Abraham Accords started by Jared Kushner and carried along by current US administration. The rail would epitomize the logic of tying economic development to Israel’s acceptance in the region and the message a new Middle East is coming—greener and more peaceful. Where there was oil, now a train, where there were enemies, now friends. Netanyahu, perhaps unhelpfully, held up a map of this “New Middle East” at the UN General Assembly in late September, on which he drew the “visionary corridor” in red. Few Arabs found the vision inspiring. On his map, there is no Palestine, but a full Israeli annexation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and Syrian Golan Heights.
Many have linked the Saudi-Israel deal to the attack carried out by the military wing of Hamas and other militant groups on October 7th. Biden linked the attack to “regional integration for Israel and regional integration overall,” seemingly referring to the IMEC itself. Hamas’s plans were years in the making and set on disrupting a 16-year status quo of siege and intermittent bombing on Gaza. Still, Saudi normalization talks are on ice as Israel kills thousands of Palestinians weekly and discusses expelling them to Egypt. Continued US to discussions of the IMEC may be merely a bid to normalize the ongoing massacres it has sanctioned. Or perhaps the US assumes that once the war is over, plans will pick up as before and the diplomatic accomplishment of the line will be all the more impressive.
The Hejaz Rail was also built in a moment of extreme uncertainly, as revolts, foreign occupations, and bankruptcy threatened the Ottoman Empire at every corner. Its completion stunned the empire’s many skeptics. The unthinkability was part of the point. If the IMEC is laid following the regional current outrage Israel is garnering, its symbolism will also be even greater. But is the audience only in Tel Aviv and Washington?
Peace
To the people of Jordan, the image of Israelis rolling over Jordanian land would turn the rail into a monument to their powerlessness. As protestors are keen to remember, Jordan signed a peace deal with Israel in 1994 and an agreement to host US troops two years later. But such arrangements do not tell the whole story.
The King Abdullah II of Jordan, a close U.S. ally, is working under pressure. This month, tens of thousands of Jordanians have converged downtown and around the Israeli embassy, denouncing the bombardment of Gaza and Arab states’ complicity in Israel’s 75-year occupation of Palestine. Nightly, they demand an end to the peace deal and access to the border. After all, most are Palestinians who hold the inalienable right to return.
The US may be buoyed by the success of the Jordan-Israel gas deal. Despite parliamentary condemnation and years of popular protests, higher levels of government prevailed. In 2022, Israeli gas began flowing into Jordan. Perhaps a rail line could be forced through after it. But, the steady crawl of a train raises different feelings than a pipeline nestled somewhere in the earth. Jordanians, whose largest metropolitan area lies on the route from Beit Sein to al-Haditha, who are currently endeavoring to boycott a staggering list of products related to Israel, will protest this track vigorously.
Today, guards are spaced across the old rail’s length. Each is responsible for keeping a 7-kilometer stretch safe from looters. Rumors of gold left by the fleeing Ottomans have echoed for all of Jordan’s history. But the looters have come and left the line hollowed from shovels and bulldozers. Securing the IMEC would require a much larger militarized force.
Muhammad, a guard in the south of Jordan, offered his thoughts on the feasibility of the proposed route, “if it serves [hajj] pilgrims, it will be very safe. If it is for trade, the situation would be sensitive.” Diplomatically, he continued, “the reaction of people will vary due to their belief, and their ignorance, and their fellow-feeling… The government will not risk the kingdom’s reputation and security in this way.”
Prosperity
The Abraham Accords have largely been criticized for leaving Palestine alone in its struggle. Setting aside that many in the region put dignity, justice, and reunion with their land and loved ones over any price, such plans should also be scrutinized on economic grounds. What does the ‘prosperity’ on offer look like? In this case, it could be more austerity.
Jordan’s current debt and its reliance on debt reduction as a function of IMF assistance already give the country very little room to set financial policy. Biden described China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) as a debt noose to contrast his vision of the IMEC. But no details have been put forward related to the corridor’s financing. The US rail system, where private ownership pairs treacherous working conditions with soaring costs, serves as a different cautionary example from the BRI.
The Ottomans faced a similar dilemma when building the Hejaz Rail as their other European-sponsored lines deepened their crisis of foreign debts. To solve this took a massive fundraising campaign, billing the train as a religious project in process and purpose to Muslims from North Africa to India. It worked, making the train one of the most dramatic realizations of pan-Islamism to date. Such creativity lives far away from this project.
Outside of the debt likely to wrap around Jordan if the IMEC advances, ideas of increased trade income should be examined. The G20 was the site of another rail announcement, a planned corridor from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Zambia to the port city of Lobito on the Atlantic coast of Angola. Biden described this rail as bound to boost the local economy while providing minerals for electric vehicles. Profits from the deep coltan and copper reserves of central Africa have not gone to ordinary people but fueled endemic violence in the DRC and been privatized away in Zambia. A train to the coast is not the missing ingredient to regional prosperity. Connection to the core has yet to be.
A New Middle East
The development of large-scale green technology is an admirable goal. So is regional integration. Pan-Arabism long held it to be the pathway to a Middle East less reliant on outside assistance and thus less vulnerable to political meddling. Such an economic block would be all the better positioned to create equitable links to the economies of Europe, India, China, the US and beyond. Of course, the West is not pursuing an integrated Middle East but a line between four of its allies to Europe. Western intentions in this regard have been clear ever since the division of Lebanon and Syria to the French and Jordan and Palestine to the British.
If Biden wanted to do anything to minimize regional division part, he would call for Israel to stop the assault on Gaza. If he were truly serious about regional integration, he would stop US aid to Israel and demand it uphold international law and let Palestinians return home. This is all, sadly, within his power. Instead, in the same press conference, he dismissed the civilian deaths in Gaza as “the price of waging a war” and stated he has “no confidence in the number that the Palestinians are using.”
The American stance against Palestinians make the IMEC more preposterous than ever. But when the project fails, it won’t be due of diplomatic shortcomings alone. Though Arab governmental antipathies to Israel have been reawakened, Saudi-Israeli normalization seems the most likely piece of the plan to advance. The “peace for prosperity” formula is meant for governments, with poverty and suppression fine substitutes for their people. This focus has created a view of the world that fills maps in the colors of alliances, collapsing peoples into allies or enemies. For too long, it has accurately predicted the relations of the region. But this October illustrated that even when the suppression of a people looks stable, the floodgates are ready to open.
It looks less likely than ever that a train line will proceed the liberation of Palestine. The failure of the IMEC will be a sign that land, where trains travel and people live, cannot be collapsed into abstraction. Incidentally, this is the symbolic strength with which the Hejaz still lies iron and dormant over the Levant. Many stand to welcome the reopening of the Amman-Jerusalem corridor.
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