The fact that Israel signed an alternative project to the Suez Canal by building a railway line between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea resonated in Egypt.
The project of uniting the Ashdod Port on the Mediterranean coast by the railway in Eliyat on the Red Sea coast, announced by Israel at the end of January, was apparently perceived as an alternative transportation to the Suez Canal.
Egypt earns $ 7 billion a year through transitions through the Suez Canal.
While Israel is calculating strategically to create an alternative to the Suez Canal, it is trying to develop new strategies with the concern that the governments that will come to work in Egypt after Mubarak's overthrow will be distant to Israel.
Israel, which emphasizes the possibility that the security situation in Sinai may pose a threat to the Suez Canal, is on the project that will allow the transportation of strategic goods at least in the Asian, European and African lines, even at expensive costs, by connecting the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea.
The Netenyahu government argues that the electric railway project has received favorable responses from the region, especially those in trade with China and India.
The 350-kilometer-long railway line that will connect the Mediterranean and the Red Sea will pass 30 kilometers south of Tel Aviv.
Israel has not yet made the final decision of the project, and the project has not made a statement on the cost of funding and where to find money.
There is not a preliminary study on the cargo volume of the railway project, but it is not difficult to predict that the project will be transport-weighted.
Egyptian media unite in the view that Israel is seeking an alternative to the Suez Canal.
Egyptian experts pointed out that rail transport is more expensive than sea transport, expressing the view that Israel's project will not affect the revenues of the Suez Canal.
According to Egyptian maritime experts, a vessel 7 can be transported by 8-100 container but with a train when carrying 150 bin containers.
Egyptian experts argue that rail transport costs $ 50 to $ 60 per container, arguing that Israel's project is a local work that can only be beneficial within the country.
Israel, on the other hand, aims to transfer the cargoes to be transported by rail to the Red Sea at the same cost as the Suez Canal by calculating the tolls per ship from the Suez Canal.
Immediately after the fall of the Mubarak regime, Egyptian relations with Israel entered a period of cooling. With Israel killing six Egyptian soldiers at the border and the protesters raiding Israel's Embassy in Cairo, a noticeable tension began between the two countries.
While Egypt was preparing to apply to the UN for allegedly using the underground and surface riches of this region in the years when Israel invaded Sinai, Israel apologized for the first time in its history to a Egyptian border guard.
Although the agents and prisoners exchanges between the two countries seemed to end the tension between Egypt and Israel, voices that the Camp David Agreement rising from Egypt should be revised continues to disturb Israel.
While the very good relations between the two countries during the Mubarak period have been the subject of criticism of the political forces rising from the post-Mubarak country, Israel still maintains a suspicious approach to Egypt, the leading country in the Arab world, although it has a diplomatic relationship with it.
Source: AA
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