The new port will be located around 5 nautical miles away from Eilat, Israel’s only seaport on the Gulf of Aqaba and consequently the Red Sea. [GETTY]
Egypt plans to construct a seaport in Taba, a southern Sinai town that overlooks the Gulf of Aqaba, within a larger plan to turn Sinai into a major logistical hub and accelerate the movement of trade between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean.
The planned port could be a response to a long-touted Israeli plan to decouple the international maritime movement from the Suez Canal by establishing an alternate maritime route via its and occupied Palestinian territory.
The new port will be located around 5 nautical miles away from Eilat, Israel’s only seaport on the Gulf of Aqaba and consequently the Red Sea.
Its construction was approved by Egyptian President, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, on January 27.
The port will be an expansion of the town’s small port which is spread out over 43,408 square metres and serves tourism in the area.
After its expansion, the Taba seaport will stretch over 220,500 square metres and serve the trade movement in the Gulf of Aqaba and in the future link up to the Suez Canal, the shortest cut between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, maritime transport specialists said.
“The new port will be a good beginning for the implementation of a new route that complements the Suez Canal in the area,” Wael Qadura, a former assistant to the head of the Suez Canal, told The New Arab.
The Taba port can link the Mediterranean with the Red Sea via the Port of Arish in northern Sinai, only if Egypt constructs a railway between Taba and Arish, around 260 kilometres away.
Plans for the establishment of the new port were formulated in Egypt several months ago.
In mid-November 2024, the Egyptian president delegated administrative supervision over the tourist port of Taba to the General Authority for Red Sea Ports from the General Authority for Tourist Development.
Countermove
The new Egyptian plan near the Gulf of Aqaba seems to be a counterpunch to renewed debates in Israel about building a canal that potentially disconnects the international maritime movement from the Suez Canal which before the current regional unrest and the war in Gaza handled between 12% and 15% of global trade.
The Israeli project dates back to 1963, having proposed the excavation of a canal across the Negev desert that connects Eilat port with the Mediterranean.
The concept paper of the canal, which named it after Israel’s founder, David Ben-Gurion, was classified for 33 years before it was released in 1996.
This paper was energized by the 1956 Suez Crisis which was precipitated by the decision of late Egyptian president, Gamal Abdel Nasser, to nationalize the canal, which was owned by the Suez Canal Company, a joint British-French venture.
The paper envisioned a 160-mile-long canal across Israel that would be a strategically valuable alternative to the Suez Canal.
Howard David Maccabee, who prepared the paper, advocated the use of nuclear explosives to dig the Ben-Gurion Canal.
His plan was for the canal to extend northward from Eilat and then turn westward through mountains to the Mediterranean, passing by Beersheba and the Gaza Strip.
This project was kept in the drawers of the offices of the Israeli government and research centres since then.
Nonetheless, it resurfaced in recent months with the war in Gaza watering the mouths of Israel’s far-right politicians and parties for the depopulation and annexation of this Palestinian territory, a demand now endorsed by US President Donald Trump.
The canal project also came under the spotlight with a surge in attacks on ships traversing the Red Sea to and from the Suez Canal by the Iran-backed Houthi militia in Yemen, observers in Egypt said.
There is belief that one of the hidden aims of the war on Gaza included digging the Ben-Gurion Canal,” Qadura said.
“By planning such a canal, Israel wants to shift the focus of the international maritime movement to it, from Egypt at present,” he added.
Subscribe Now and Listen to our Podcasts OnLarge plan
The Suez Canal, a major source of foreign currency revenues for Egypt, is at the centre of the Arab country’s economic development plans, with the government planning a gigantic logistical, industrial and commercial hub that attracts tens of billions of dollars in investments in the coming years around the canal.
The planned seaport in Taba is also seen as an important addition to Egypt’s economic aspirations and the Arab country’s ability to function as an important link in the transport of goods between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean.
It aspires to benefit from and serve the multibillion dollar development planned by Saudi Arabia on its Red Sea coast and serve the commercial movement between the Arab Peninsula and Europe.
Nonetheless, the potential construction of this port in Taba is a small detail in the larger picture of Egypt’s development ambitions for Sinai, the territory that shares borders with Israel and the Palestinian enclave of Gaza.
Covering around 60,000 square kilometres of land and inhabited by a little more than 550,000 people, Sinai was deprived of development for many decades in the past, since its liberation from Israeli occupation in 1973.
In recent years, however, this territory, which is larger in size than Israel; the occupied Palestinian West Bank; Gaza, and Lebanon combined, fell at the centre of Egyptian development plans.
So far, the government has established a series of new urban communities that contain thousands of flats in Sinai, within a development process that is changing lifestyles for its mostly Bedouin population and creating hope that this territory can part with its past of underdevelopment.
It also launched major industrial and agricultural projects, amid hopes for convincing millions of Egyptians to relocate to this territory.
The development and population of Sinai, political observers said, would be an important guarantee for security in this Egyptian territory.
“Development is in fact synonymous with national security,” Gen. Ali Hefzi, former governor of North Sinai, told TNA.
Egypt invested a huge amount of money and a large number of lives in Sinai’s security in the past decade, against attempts by a branch of the Islamic State group to establish an Islamic caliphate in this Egyptian territory.Â
The war in Gaza and Israeli annexation plans in relation to the coastal enclave, all of which are linked to Israeli plans to displace Gaza’s population of 2.1 million into Sinai, have put the importance of Sinai’s development into sharp focus.
The planned port is also an integral part of Egypt’s development aspirations for Sinai, ones that would see this territory turn into a major logistical zone and a major hub for the international trade movement, analysts said.
“Egypt hopes the development of Sinai will be comprehensive and sustainable,” Gen. Hefzi said.
“This development will be the best guarantee for stability and security in this Egyptian territory,” he added.