The proposed Ben Gurion Canal project would connect the Gulf of Aqaba (the eastern arm of the Red Sea) to the Mediterranean Sea.
- David Ben Gurian, after whom it would be named, was the first Prime Minister of Israel.
- The canal would rival the Suez Canal that runs through Egypt.
- The idea is to cut a canal through the Israeli-controlled Negev Desert from the tip of the Gulf of Aqaba — the eastern arm of the Red Sea that juts into Israel’s southern tip and south-western Jordan — to the Eastern Mediterranean coast.
- This so-called Ben Gurion Canal Project, which was first envisioned in the 1960s would, if it were to be actually completed, transform global maritime dynamics by taking away Egypt’s monopoly over the shortest route between Europe and Asia.
