The headlines surrounding Israel’s Transportation Minister Miri Regev are full of promise. She travels the world, one week to the UAE, the next to the US, claiming to advance the Railways for Peace project. This project is a central pillar of IMEC, the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor, envisioned as a transformative trade route linking India to Europe via the Middle East.
IMEC has the potential to be a powerful engine of growth for all participating countries. It promises to upgrade trade and logistics between the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Israel, anchoring the Jewish state more firmly in a moderate regional axis while strengthening ties with Europe and India. Yet despite the rhetoric, the project has been stalled for some time.
There are many possible explanations for this delay. Nevertheless, it is difficult to ignore the central responsibility of Israel’s transportation minister herself.
Over the past few years, various actors have attempted to advance the project. In professional discussions and planning documents related to Railways for Peace, an expectation emerged, among European stakeholders and their Saudi counterparts, that the railway segment built within Israel would also extend to Jenin.
This was not a marginal idea. The matter was discussed in planning committees, a routing outline was proposed, and preliminary approvals were granted. Specific land expropriations were identified, including parcels from the village of Muqeibleh in Israel’s Gilboa Regional Council, and the crossing point from Jenin was defined.
In parallel, significant resources were invested in preparations for a cargo terminal in the Jenin area, as part of a broader vision of regional connectivity. All that remained was for Israel to complete its section of the rail line.
Miri Regev has repeatedly demonstrated that political survival is her primary motivation. Investigative reporting, including the so-called “diamonds affair,” revealed her method and the importance she places on cultivating support among Likud’s party activists. Her public conduct vis-à-vis the prime minister has further underscored her willingness to subordinate policy considerations to political expediency whenever necessary.
The mayor of Afula strongly opposed the idea of a railway line from Jenin passing near his city. An ideological hardliner, he objected on overtly nationalist grounds. He turned to Knesset member Ofir Katz, a resident of Afula. Katz, elected as a representative of the Galilee and Valleys district, is in need of strong allies ahead of the upcoming Likud primaries. Regev, too, depends on support from Afula and its surroundings.
Politics puts railway project on hold
Thus, narrow intra-party politics led to the suspension of the railway project in September 2024. The stated justification was a populist one: “not rewarding terror” and “sending a message to Turkey.”
The result was a freezing of the entire project for an extended period. It is reasonable to assume that this decision also contributed to the hardening of regional positions – among them the Saudi stance that any meaningful progress with Israel must be accompanied by significant steps vis-à-vis the Palestinians. A single decision, rooted in short-term political calculations, may have reverberated across the entire regional system.
More recently, pressure has reportedly increased from French and Turkish actors to continue the project by rerouting it through Syria.
The Julani-led administration in parts of Syria operates under Turkish patronage, and Ankara is actively seeking to strengthen Syria as a regional infrastructure hub. This alternative route has appeared in earlier project-related documents, but it is now being promoted with greater urgency, in no small part due to Israel’s perceived lack of reliability.
Against this backdrop, Regev’s recent diplomatic trips appear puzzling.
One can easily imagine the meetings in which Israel’s transportation minister seeks to persuade her counterparts that the project should be revived and advanced. But how is she to explain her own decisions in choosing a narrow, personal political interest over a project that could generate billions for Israel’s economy, stabilize the moderate Sunni axis, and strengthen Israel’s strategic ties with India and Europe?
Time and again, internal Likud politics come at a high cost to the State of Israel. At times, through populist statements that require diplomatic damage control and at others through concrete decisions that inflict long-term economic and geopolitical harm.
The prime minister has chosen to send the very minister responsible for this crisis to resolve it. What can one expect from a government in which responsibility does not imply accountability, and a state commission of inquiry is treated as a red line? After all, it is only our future that is at stake.
The writer is the co-founder and CEO of Darkenu.