National Security Notebook | Number 16, July 12, 2026
Saudi Arabia seeks a separate corridor.
It seems like ages ago, but there was a time when a diplomatic détente between Israel and Saudi Arabia looked like it was right around the corner. Before the Hamas terror attacks of October 7, 2023, Riyadh and Jerusalem appeared to be just weeks away from a historic political normalization, and perhaps even the Kingdom’s entry into the Abraham Accords. (Indeed, there’s plenty of circumstantial evidence to suggest that Hamas’ terror campaign was driven at least in part by a desire - one shared in Tehran - to derail the budding Saudi-Israeli rapprochement).
These days, though, ties between the two countries are decidedly frosty. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman has staked out a maximalist position since the start of the Gaza war, insisting that any further progress on the political track with Israel was conditioned on “near term” prospects for a Palestinian state – an idea that’s simply dead on arrival in post-October 7th Israel, no matter who happens to be Prime Minister. Meanwhile, Israel’s ruling coalition includes ideological bomb-throwers like National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Betzalel Smotrich, who seem downright eager for a more adversarial relationship with the Arab world.
Now, Riyadh looks like it’s taking the decoupling a step further. In response to the vulnerabilities exposed by the on-again, off-again Iran war, the Kingdom is moving to invest more deeply in regional connectivity. But it’s doing so apart from the Israelis, rather than in tandem with them – as might once have been the case. The new project, unveiled in recent days, is a regional rail link connecting Saudi Arabia with Turkey via Jordan and Syria… and bypassing Israel altogether.
That makes it a clear competitor and alternative to IMEC, the nascent India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor that officials in Jerusalem have been focused on developing for years. The inclusion of Turkey as a key player is sure to be worrisome to Israel, too, because that country is quickly eclipsing Iran as a strategic threat on account of both its virulently anti-Israeli rhetoric and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s entirely too cozy relationship with the Trump White House.
To be sure, the new rail project, which is being billed as a revival of the historic Hejaz Railway, is only in its planning stages. It doesn’t even have a formal name yet. And even the rosiest projections estimate it will take three to four years to build the 3,000-kilometer route, if it even gets off the ground at all.
Still, it serves as a timely reminder that regional development can proceed in more than one direction – and that different plans have the potentially to lead to very different versions of the Middle East.