Construction on a UAE–Israel railway line has progressed quietly despite the ongoing genocide in Gaza, with officials describing the work as already in an “advanced stage,” Israeli media revealed on 25 November.

Israel’s Channel 15, Yedioth Ahronoth, and i24 reported that a significant portion of the rail infrastructure is already finished, forming the backbone of a commercial corridor meant to move goods from India into the Gulf and onward to Haifa.

According to the reports, Israeli Transportation Minister Miri Regev traveled secretly to Abu Dhabi last week at the head of an unpublicized delegation.

The visit, conducted during the height of Israel’s offensive against Gaza, revived coordination on what Israeli media call the “Peace Railway.”

The project was originally drafted by the US in 2018 and later folded into the wider India–Middle East–Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) linking India, West Asia, and Europe.

The delegation reportedly used the Dubai Airshow as cover for part of its trip, while i24 added that a technical team from the Israeli Transport Ministry also visited Abu Dhabi in recent days to accelerate planning.

Alongside rail cargo, the corridor will reportedly host communications cables, pipelines, and energy transmission lines.

Goods would leave India’s Mundra Port by sea, enter the UAE, and continue overland through Saudi Arabia and Jordan before reaching Haifa for export to Europe and the US.

Israeli media says the talks were dispatched with urgency after reports that France and Turkiye were advancing a competing proposal to divert the route north, sending it from Jordan into Syria and then to a Lebanese port – a move that would exclude Israel entirely.

Senior Emirati and Israeli rail officials have already agreed to establish a joint administration to oversee transit and finalize the remaining segment of the line.

Israeli sources cited by Yedioth Ahronoth claim the corridor could eventually allow perishable products to reach Israel within hours, dependent on agreements with Saudi Arabia and Emirati approval.

The project is framed in Israel as a way to reduce the country’s dependence on a narrow set of economic partners and to offset its increasingly insular market.

Throughout the genocide in Gaza, Israel’s Transport Ministry kept silent as work on the corridor continued out of public view.

Israeli outlets now report that while Tel Aviv froze its own political coordination during the war, the UAE carried on with India, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan, advancing route planning and regional agreements without waiting for Israel.

The result, they note, is a project that has steadily taken shape without Israeli input, leaving Tel Aviv now rushing to regain a place in an initiative already moving ahead on its own.