The royal business jet sent by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan of the United Arab Emirates was waiting on the tarmac at an airport in Jordan for instructions to proceed to Israel’s Ben Gurion International Airport. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was still at his office in Jerusalem, getting ready to board the plane for a triumphant bilateral summit in the UAE capital, Abu Dhabi.
Together, Bin Zayed and Netanyahu were planning to unveil some $10 billion in joint infrastructure projects that would knit the Middle East together with a rail network running 1,100 miles from the Mediterranean coast to the Persian Gulf. The UAE would finance construction of a deep-water port at the Israeli end of the Red Sea. A pipeline pumping oil between Israel’s Ashkelon and Eilat terminals would be connected to the Arabian Peninsula either by tanker or through a possible new 430-mile underwater pipeline through the Red Sea to Saudi Arabia’s Yanbu terminal.
