Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Israel Pushes Freight Rail Link To Jordan — And Beyond

Israel’s transport minister proposed on Wednesday linking its freight railway network with Jordan and Saudi Arabia and said he presented the idea to President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy last month.

Under the proposal, goods could travel by rail from Israel’s Mediterranean port of Haifa through Jordan to Saudi Arabia’s Gulf port of Dammam via Jordan.

Yisrael Katz, who also serves as Israel’s intelligence minister, declined at a news conference to say whether Arab states had agreed to join his initiative.

After Syria’s civil war began in 2011, Israel opened its Haifa port as a conduit for goods coming from Turkey and Europe to be trucked to Arab countries further east, but traffic has been limited due to small capacity and political opposition.

A railway connection would formalize links across tense borders. Katz said his plan could also give the Palestinians far greater ability to export goods from the occupied West Bank to the Arab world. Palestinians say Israel’s control of that border has limited their trade prospects.

“If the Palestinians connect to a railway system, the entire area will get a significant economic boost,” he said.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.