Israel is meant to be at the center of at least four international telecommunications projects (if the participation of the Eilat-Ashkelon Pipeline Company in one of them counts) and serve as a main junction in data and Internet transmission between East and West. Submarine fiber-optic cables were supposed to land at cities along Israel’s Mediterranean coast such as Netanya, Ashkelon, and Rishon LeZion, and at Eilat on the Red Sea, and substantially improve the ability of Israeli companies to transmit information within the country and outside of it, and to carry out complex data processing for cloud and AI infrastructures.
A multiplicity of submarine optic cables could have made it easier for international companies to set up server farms for AI processing in Israel, which would make service to local customers cheaper. It would also be a prestigious bridge for the flow of information between Europe and Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states. All this would be at the expense of Egypt, as most telecommunications cables between Europe and the East currently run via the Suez Canal.
All these projects were planned on the basis of the promise held out by the Abraham Accords, in the years before the Swords of Iron war, that a diplomatic agreement would shortly be signed between Israel and Saudi Arabia. Now, all four projects are a long way from completion, and some of them have been frozen. This is not just because of the lack of a diplomatic horizon with Saudi Arabia, but also for more prosaic reasons: objections by green organizations and local authorities, bureaucracy, and the absence of government policy on the matter.
Blue-Raman venture: Fear of Houthi terrorism
Three submarine cables meant to connect Israel to the world are currently a long way behind schedule. The best known is Google’s Blue-Raman venture that is meant to connect Europe to East Asia via the Arabian peninsula. Google’s prestigious venture brought together telecommunications giants such as Telecom Italia, Sparkle, and Omantel, with sixteen fiber pairs carrying between them 218 terrabits per second, which would enable data to flow freely between Europe, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and India. Rollout was meant to be completed in 2025.
While the western cable between Israel and Europe has been completed, as has deployment in Israel by Bezeq, the connection in the Red Sea has been delayed for many months. This is because of the operating costs and the heavy cost of insuring cable-laying vessels and crew in the region. The Houthi rebel terrorist organization in Yemen demonstrated its ability to damage submarine cables in the Red Sea at least twice during the Swords of Iron war, and now, even after the ceasefire, Western crews fear to work in the area.
TEAS: Saudis refuse to join
The second project is a cable called TEAS (Trans Europe Asia System) intended to connect Marseille in the West with Mumbai in the East via Israel and Saudi Arabia, at a huge budget of $900 million. Israeli fund Keystone has taken a 30% share of the project led by fiber optic network provider Cinturion. Israeli businessperson Kobi Richter has a 10% stake.
In the project, two cables are supposed to be laid on different routes: one a submarine cable to land at Ashkelon and continue south to Eilat on the Red Sea; the other more northerly cable is meant to land at Rishon LeZion and from there to continue overland to Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and thence under the Indian Ocean to Mumbai.
The project was about to get underway in 2023, but was frozen as soon as the Swords of Iron war broke out, because of Saudi Arabia’s refusal to participate in the light of the prominent Israeli stake in it. In 2024, further negotiations took place with US mediation to resume work with a Saudi group, but nothing went ahead. Despite this, the Israeli shareholders still maintain their holdings, apparently in the expectation that it will be possible to bring Saudi Arabia into the Abraham Accords in the future.
One possibility for the southern TEAS cable was for it to run on the Eilat-Ashkelon Pipeline Company pipeline along the border with Egypt. The venture, which was meant to enable cities along the pipeline to build server farms and AI infrastructure, was delayed for many years because of the objection of the Ministry of Finance to the financial structure of operating the infrastructure. In 2023 the disputes were resolved, and at the end of that year the minister of communications and the prime minister announced the laying of the foundation stone for it. But since then it has been delayed by objections from the Israel Nature and Parks Authority and by local authorities through which the pipeline passes.
The final stage of planning, in which Eilat-Ashkelon Pipeline Company proposes to lay four fiber optic cables alongside two cables that it is laying in any case in order to protect its infrastructure has been in a process of dealing with objections for a year and a half.
EMC venture: Delayed approvals
Another cable called EMC, in which Greek and Cypriot telecommunications companies are in partnership with Hot and Tamares in Israel, has also been delayed. In this case too there are two cables: one from Marseille via Crete to Ashkelon, whence it will be connected overland via Jordan to the city of Haql in north-west Saudi Arabia; the other from Genoa via Athens and Crete and landing at Netanya, from which it too will be connected to Haql overland.
The advantage of these two cables is that they do not need to pass through the Red Sea, which is currently a high-risk area. The project, estimated to cost $850 million, was meant to have been finished last year, but instead of that it is still at the survey stage. This was interrupted last summer by Turkish ships, on the grounds that the line goes via Turkish territory and that its planning required coordination with Turkey, which is hostile to the Israeli-Cypriot-Greek strategic alliance.
In Israel too, work on building the cable’s landing stations in Netanya and Ashkelon has been delayed by objections from green organizations, and the project has not yet received approval here. The assessment is that lack of preparedness on the part of the government for dealing with the matter and the absence of a clear division of authority between the Ministry of Communications and the Planning Administration are making it difficult for all telecommunications cable projects in Israel to progress at a reasonable pace.
Data transfer nearing full capacity
At present, Israel is connected to the global Internet via just three submarine Internet transmission cables that are nearing full capacity: the Telecom Italia cable of MedNautilus, which is responsible for half the Internet traffic to and from Israel, and the telecommunications cables of Tamares and Bezeq International, which take 30% and 20% of the traffic respectively.
Israel currently has no cable that continues to the Red Sea, and it is connected entirely via the Mediterranean to terminal stations in Cyprus, Greece, and Italy. Experts estimate that the free transmission capacity is steadily reducing, and that traffic on the existing cables is growing by 30% annually. In addition, the small number of fiber optic cables and the ability to damage them close to the shore place Israel in constant danger of being cut off by an enemy country or a terrorist organization.
No response to the report was forthcoming from Hot-Tamares, Google, Cinturion, or Eilat-Ashkelon Pipeline Company.
Published by Globes, Israel business news – en.globes.co.il – on January 21, 2026.
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd., 2026.
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