What is Israel’s proposed Ben Gurion Canal and is it related to Gaza?

Is Israel's brutal assault on Gaza only in retaliation to Hamas's October 9 attacks?

Or is there a more sinister plan behind what Palestinians believe is the start of the second 'nakba' – a redux of the 1948 "catastrophe" that saw Zionist militias invade Palestine and drive out tens of thousands of people from their homes?

As Israeli bombardment continues to devastate Gaza — before a humanitarian truce — and evict thousands of Palestinians from their homes, online chatter has put the spotlight back on an old plan by the Jewish state to dig a canal to connect the Red Sea with the Mediterranean Sea through the Gulf of Aqaba.

The route of the proposed canal passes close to the northern border of Gaza, the besieged enclave that was home to more than two million people before the latest conflagration started. Some believe Israel might even change course to cut it right through Gaza.

And a damning report in Israeli media has deepened suspicion that the Netanyahu government didn't act on intelligence warnings about a possible Hamas attack, just to use it as a pretext to launch its 'clear-Gaza campaign'.

So, what is the canal project that Israel is so interested in? And why is it so intrinsically linked to Gaza, where airstrikes have killed more than 15,000 people – most of them children and women – in just a few weeks?

According to British journalist and author Yvonne Ridley, Gaza might be standing in the way of the proposed path of the major second canal in the region.

"The only thing stopping the newly-revised project from being revived and rubber-stamped is the presence of the Palestinians in Gaza," Ridley wrote in an opinion piece.

If it comes to fruition, the project could disrupt global trade dynamics by breaking Egypt's monopoly over the key trade route between Europe and Asia.

An alternative canal with Israel at its helm would also give the state potential strategic economic importance, according to the New Arab.

The proposed canal is almost one-third longer than the 193.3km Suez Canal, which currently handles roughly 12 percent of the world's shipping trade.

Over 22,000 ships sailed through this strategic route in 2022, considered one of the world's most important maritime chokepoints.

An alternative to Suez

The canal project – named after Israel's first prime minister, Ben Gurion – was first envisaged way back in the 1960s, backed by Tel Aviv's all-weather ally, the US.

In a memorandum dating back to the 1960s – now declassified – the US had even proposed to use nuclear explosives to create the canal across the Negev desert, adding that "a sea-level canal across Israel appears to be within the range of technological feasibility".

It, however, warned that most likely "Arab countries surrounding Israel would object strongly to the construction of such a canal".

The Suez Canal — connecting the Mediterranean and the Red Sea — was inaugurated on November 17, 1869.

The former French consul to Cairo, Ferdinand de Lesseps, had first secured an agreement with the Ottoman governor of Egypt in 1854, which subsequently led to the formation of the Suez Canal Company two years later.

The Suez Canal Company, a joint French-British concessionary enterprise, was given a 99-year lease to operate the canal, a property of the Egyptian government, after completion of the work.

The genesis of the alternative canal dates back to 1888, when maritime powers comprising Great Britain, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Spain, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Russia, and Türkiye signed the Convention of Constantinople to ensure that the Suez Canal would remain open to ships of all nations at all times, during war or peace.

However, Egypt stopped Israel from accessıng the canal from 1948 to 1950 after the Jewish state's establishment following the "nakba", the bloody displacement of an estimated 750,000 Palestinians.

This led to the Suez Crisis, or Tripartite Aggression when the UK, France, and Israel unsuccessfully attempted to regain control of the maritime trade route. In response, Egypt closed the canal to all international shipping the same year, sparking one of the biggest trade disruptions ever in maritime history.

A similar disruption in 2021 had also revived talks of the Israeli canal – when a merchant vessel, Ever Given, ran aground, blocking the Suez for days.

In June, the Suez Canal authorities raked in a record $9.4 billion in the current financial year, a $1.4 billion increase from the previous year.

'Follow the money'

Social media user Celine Lilas, among many others, posted her take on one of the reasons why Western powers tend to support Israel.

"You might be asking yourself, why do they want to build another canal?" she says in her video, before proceeding to explain how "Israel wants to seize Gaza, annex the land, take it over so they can build their canal through it."

"The US, the UK, and France are all for that because it's gonna make them a lot of money at the cost of millions of lives destroyed," she adds.

A comment with more than 7,000 likes under the video said: "In times of war, it's best to never focus on emotions or sides but rather to follow the money because it's always about money."

Some of the over 11,700 comments also discussed how Israel may be interested in seizing gas reserves in Gaza.

However, there are many who doubt the canal plans and the feasibility of constructing the project.

Another social media user acknowledged that going through with the canal would prove challenging, adding, "But think. Total control. Complete domination over one of two canals that connects worlds and hosts 30% of all world trade. Even if the US only took half of that, that's still 15% of trade worldwide. The US will spend billions on this project for that."

Yet another user said: "The plan was to dig it with nukes. In the US, they tried nuclear fracking. Just because someone wrote it down doesn't mean it will ever happen."

In 2021, the Arab Weekly quoted the Secretary General of the Arab Seaports Federation, Major General Essam Badawi, as saying, "Talk about an Israeli canal is old. It depends on the nature of the soil in the projected location and the sea level, which are two of the things that have hindered the project's emergence so far."

Yasar Jarrar, director of AIG Consulting and a professor at Hult International Business School, said that an independent supply chain would allow Israel to have less dependence on other countries for food, energy, and medicines.

"Hence the Ben Gurion Canal project, which connects the Red Sea to the Mediterranean and reduces dependence on the Suez Canal," he was quoted as saying.