Economy & Aid
Israeli op-ed urges Netanyahu to anchor the India-Europe corridor
Graphic: Times of Palestine
Original Reporting
The India-Middle East-Europe economic corridor should have stood at the center of the latest Netanyahu-Trump meeting, the environmentalist Gidon Bromberg argued Thursday in Maariv, warning that rival routes through Syria and Turkey are being drawn to bypass Israel entirely.
Bromberg, Israeli director of EcoPeace Middle East, a joint Israeli, Palestinian and Jordanian organization, wrote that the corridor known as IMEC is the region's most important stability opportunity in decades, resting on economic partnership rather than military deterrence alone.
A route that skips Haifa, he argued, would not only strip Israel of its largest economic and political opening in a generation but drain the project of the connective purpose that could steady the region.
The corridor's promise, in his telling, answers one of the world's sharpest strategic pressure points, dependence on the Strait of Hormuz, through overland transport, linked electricity grids, communications infrastructure and renewable energy.
Its deepest potential, Bromberg wrote, is as a long-term strategy against Iranian influence, and its infrastructure crossing the whole region could create jobs, draw investors, and clear a path toward a Palestinian state under moderate leadership. If Trump wants to widen the Abraham Accords, he concluded, the corridor must be a cornerstone of that strategy.
