Dead Sea depression that is below sea level

The Ben Gurion Canal project is an "alleged"[1] Israeli project to build a canal through Israel to connect the Gulf of Aqaba to the Mediterranean Sea.[2][3][4][5] The canal would rival the Suez Canal, which runs through Egypt and has had many disturbances in its history, such as the Israeli blockage through the Suez Canal and Straits of Tiran, closure of the Suez Canal (1956–1957), closure of the Suez Canal (1967–1975), and the 2021 Suez Canal obstruction.[4] It would be about 100 km longer than the 193-km Suez Canal.[5]

On 28 March 2021, when the Suez Canal was blocked by the stranded container ship Ever Given, a Syrian blogger with the pen name Naram Sargon[6] wrote an article that claimed the stranding and blocking was deliberate and part of a plot by the West to support an alternative canal that would run through Israel.[3] An extended version of the article was published the next day in Farah News, an Arabic-language Australian website, in which Sargon claimed that Israel would build two canals, for ships to transit each way, between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, and that they would call it the "Ben Gurion Canal".[2] Ran Porat, a research associate with the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC), dismissed "Sargon's fantasy", saying that while canals alternative or supplemental to the Suez, including ones through Israel, had been discussed for a long time, Sargon's plan did not exist.[1]

Arabah Valley by the Gulf of Aqaba
Arabah Valley by the Gulf of Aqaba
Arabah in 1959
Arabah valley in 1959

1963 US feasibility study

The route from the Maccabee study

In July 1963, H. D. Maccabee of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, under contract to the United States Department of Energy, wrote a memorandum that explored the possibility of using 520 buried nuclear explosions to help excavate a canal through the hills in the Negev Desert. The document was classified until 1993.[7][8]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 Porat, Ran (1 April 2021). "The Great Suez Canal Plot". AIJAC. ... an alleged Israeli canal project, the 'Ben Gurion Canal' ....
  2. 1 2 Sargon, Naram (29 March 2021). "نارام سرجون: السفينة الانتحارية ومحاولة اغتيال قناة السويس.. الرومانسية الناصرية والحلم الساداتي" [Naram Sargon: The suicide ship and the Suez Canal assassination attempt ... Nasserist romance and the Sadatian dream]. Farah News.
  3. 1 2 Sargon, Naram (28 March 2021). "السفينة الانتحارية ومحاولة اغتيال قناة السويس .. الرومانسية الناصرية والحلم الساداتي" [The suicide ship and the Suez Canal assassination attempt ... Nasserist romance and the Sadatian dream]. serjoonn.com.
  4. 1 2 "Ship crisis revives Russian, Israeli talk of alternatives to Suez Canal". The Arab Weekly. March 30, 2021. Retrieved November 9, 2023.
  5. 1 2 "All you should know about the Israeli Ben Gurion Canal project". Frontier India. 2021-04-11. Retrieved 2023-08-15.
  6. ↑ Hammoud, Hanan (15 February 2021). "نارام سرجون لفينكس: أعتبر نفسي الكاتب الأكثر حرية.. و سيأتي يوم أكشف فيه عن اسمي الحقيقي" [Naram Sargon to Phoenix: I consider myself the freest writer... and a day will come when I reveal my real name]. Feneks [Phoenix]. [... I am fanatical about my Syria, my Syrian culture ....]
  7. ↑ Guenot, Marianne (August 1, 2023). "The US had a plan in the 1960s to blast an alternative Suez Canal through Israel using 520 nuclear bombs". Business Insider. Retrieved 2023-08-15.
  8. ↑ Maccabee, H. D. (July 1, 1963). "Use of Nuclear Explosives for Excavation of Sea-Level Canal Across the Negev Desert" (PDF). Retrieved November 9, 2023.
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