A Two-Hour Train From Tel Aviv to the Red Sea, Back on the Table

The Israeli Ministry of Transportation has revived plans for a railway to Eilat, the country's southernmost city, on the Red Sea. According to the ministry's announcement of 14 August 2025, it has presented initial planning for a strategic high-speed connection running from the north of the country all the way down to the Gulf of Aqaba.

The new track would run roughly 220 kilometres, the ministry said, extending the Be'er Sheba–Dimona section approved in 2021 and allowing, for the first time, a direct and fast link from the centre of the country to the Red Sea: about two hours from Tel Aviv to Eilat. The route would pass through the settlements of the Arava, the long desert valley that runs south from the Dead Sea to Eilat along the Jordanian border. The ministry said the line would strengthen the local economy, help the tourism industry, widen employment and improve residents' access to services.

Most of the ministry's case, though, was about freight. “The project is expected to significantly increase the volume of cargo transportation to and from the Port of Eilat, provide a fast and safe alternative to road transportation, reduce the traffic volumes of trucks and heavy vehicles and improve the level of safety on the roads of the south,” the statement said. It added that the railway would act as “a strategic backup for the Mediterranean ports in the event of disruptions” and would connect directly to the ports of Haifa and Ashdod.

The port at the far end of the line has almost no ships

That freight argument sits awkwardly against the state of the Port of Eilat itself. Iran-backed Houthi forces in Yemen began attacking shipping linked to Israel after the Hamas attack of October 2023, and traffic through the Red Sea collapsed. By July 2025 the port had lost more than 90 percent of its activity, was appealing for a government bailout of NIS 15 million and was warning that closure would cost 170 jobs, The Times of Israel reported. A railway built to move containers to and from Eilat would depend on shipping returning to a route that carriers have been avoiding.

Israel has announced a train to Eilat before

The plan is a new iteration of an old ambition. In July 2023 Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu unveiled a national fast-rail programme running from Kiryat Shmona in the north to Eilat in the south, with trains at up to 250 kilometres per hour, a budget of NIS 100 billion spread over years and a target date of 2040, according to Times of Israel reporting at the time. That announcement put the critical southern section, the desert stretch from Dimona to Eilat, at about 208 kilometres.

The desert is the expensive part, and the contested part

The detailed planning is being run by Netivei Israel, the state transport infrastructure company, rather than by Israel Railways. In the version presented for public consultation the day before the ministry's statement, the Dimona–Eilat line was described as about 180 kilometres of track cutting through the Negev and Arava, crossing nature reserves including roughly 11 kilometres through the Makhteshim and Ein Yahav reserve and a stretch of the Samar Sands, with a projected 8.2 million trips a year by 2040, The Times of Israel reported. The Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel called the scheme one of the most destructive to nature and landscape in recent years. No cost was disclosed at that presentation; the environmental group's own estimate ran to tens of billions of shekels.

What the ministry did not say

The statement gave no price tag for the revived plan, no funding source, no construction start date and no target year for the first passenger service. It did not say how the 220-kilometre figure relates to the shorter Dimona–Eilat section in the planning documents, and it did not address the environmental objections already lodged against the route. Nor did it say what assumptions about Red Sea shipping underpin the cargo case.