With less than 100 days until Israelis go to the polls, the election is shaping up as a referendum on nearly three years of squandered opportunity – and nowhere is that clearer than in the trade corridor that Netanyahu once promised would change the face of West Asia, and which the region is now quietly routing around him.None of this was inevitable. Israel entered the decade with real advantages: a first-mover position in the Abraham Accords, a security and technology relationship that the Gulf states valued, and an American administration eager to broker further normalisation.
Those assets have been squandered through blindness and neglect.In September 2023, the India–Middle East–Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) was unveiled with much fanfare at the G20 summit in New Delhi, where leaders of the United States, India, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, France, Germany, Italy and the EU signed a historic memorandum to build the corridor – billed as a new era of connectivity linking Europe, the West Asia and the rest of Asia by rail and sea.
From Jerusalem, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called it a moment when “a dream turns into a reality”, one he predicted would “change the face of the Middle East, the face of Israel, and affect the entire world.”Nearly three years on, the mood had curdled. In June 2026, Haaretz reported that Israel’s transport minister Miri Regev, who oversees the very project Netanyahu had once celebrated, warned Netanyahu that the region was rapidly building trade and energy partnerships designed to bypass Israel altogether, posing a real strategic threat.
Her letter named two more bypass routes taking shape around the corridor Israel was meant to anchor: a 'Moses Bridge' corridor linking Saudi Arabia to Egypt south of Israel, and a 'Development Road' corridor tying Iraq, Syria and Turkey together to its north – both threatening to make the Israeli route obsolete. It was a warning from inside the tent, evidence that the strategy Netanyahu had championed was failing on its own terms.It was clear from the start that the “changed face of the Middle East" Netanyahu promised could not materialise while Israel refuses to recognise Palestinian self-determination and keeps expanding settlements in the occupied territories.
Full realisation of the project has long depended on a normalisation deal between Jerusalem and Riyadh that has yet to happen. The Saudis insist on tying any shift in relations to Israel’s commitment to a negotiated two-state solution, based on the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative.On October 7, 2023, at 6.29 a.m, the illusion of perpetuating the occupation, bankrolling Hamas with Qatari money, stalling the peace process and still enjoying IMEC’s fruits collapsed into a nightmare.
Hamas-led militants killed roughly 1,200 people and abducted 251 hostages that morning, storming more than 20 communities and the Nova music festival in the deadliest assault on Jews since the Holocaust. UN investigators later documented evidence of sexual violence against victims, and the last hostages, dead or alive, were not returned until early 2026. A mass rocket barrage from Lebanon on northern Israeli communities followed, stirring an overwhelming national demand for revenge.
Meanwhile, reports mounted of war crimes, starvation and more than 20,000 children killed in Gaza and Lebanon. At the same time, Israel’s right-wing government approved an unprecedented wave of illegal settlements and entrenched a de facto apartheid reality. Law enforcement routinely looked away – and sometimes protected – Jewish extremists who drove dozens of Palestinian communities off their land. These events did not go unanswered.
South Africa’s genocide case against Israel remains before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which in January 2024 ordered Israel to prevent genocidal acts and allow humanitarian aid into Gaza. In June 2026, Britain, Canada, France, Norway, Australia and New Zealand imposed coordinated sanctions on Israelis tied to settler violence, while the UK separately suspended parts of its arms licensing and paused free-trade talks over the conduct of the war.Israel’s establishment keeps hiding behind familiar victimhood rhetoric, branding foreign critics as hypocrites or antisemites and country’s critics as disloyal, even treacherous.
Netanyahu, who keeps painting the strategic and economic picture in rosy tones, has offered no real response to the alarm raised by a minister from his own party and inner circle.Meanwhile, as Regev warned, a competing vision that doesn’t need Israel has filled the vacuum. The clearest sign is a Turkey-Saudi memorandum to revive the old Hejaz railway, linking the two countries via Jordan and Syria and eventually extending to Oman as an overland route bypassing the Strait of Hormuz.
Timing and framing matter: according to Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), Turkey’s trade minister told his Syrian counterpart that reducing Israel’s regional influence, alongside deeper political and economic ties, would bring prosperity to the region.This is the direct cost of an Israeli foreign policy that has spent nearly three years prioritising military latitude over diplomacy. As per the Atlantic Council, the Abraham Accords have been near-frozen since late 2023, as the Gaza war fuelled anger across the Arab world and drove regional support for ties with Israel to single digits.
A government whose own minister feels compelled to put her concerns in writing has already told the country what it needs to know, but warnings only matter if leaders act on them. Netanyahu’s government offers more of the same, with no sign of shifting from power towards diplomacy. On October 27, Israeli voters will decide whether to accept this doctrine, or demand a fundamental change.