Roving Periscope: Biden hints at anti-IMEEEC forces for the Hamas attack on Israel
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: United States President Joe Biden has hinted that those working against the proposed India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEEEC), mooted during the G-20 Summit in India in September, may be among the reasons for the October 7 invasion of Israel by Hamas.
It may also point the finger at China whose floundering Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) was being threatened by the rise of IMEEEC.
A number of countries China had enrolled in the BRI have either exited the mammoth project, gone cool on it, or having second thoughts, especially after watching Sri Lanka’s debt-trapped economy going bust, and even China’s economy slipping into recession.
Italy, which signed up for the IMEEEC in September, became the latest—and the only European nation—to have exited the BRI.
With its five-year Memorandum of Understanding up for renewal in March 2024, Italy decided to withdraw from the BRI, a reflection of frustrations with the initiative’s unmet promises and the country’s strategic reassessment of China.
Clearly, post-pandemic, China has been worried about the fate of the BRI in which it has sunk billions of dollars with little returns. Even its flagship project, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), worth about USD 62 billion, has lost its way.
No wonder China would like to ‘sabotage’ the BRI’s rival IMEEEC. Countries like Iran were also apprehensive that both its enemies, Saudi Arabia and Israel, would be part of the IMEEEC.
This is the second time in less than a week that President Biden has mentioned the IMEEEC as a potential reason for the terrorist attack by Hamas, which has claimed over 8,000 lives so far and wounded many more, ruining the entire Gaza Strip and plunging the larger Middle East into an uncertain future.
Biden said he is ‘convinced’ that one of the reasons why Hamas launched a terrorist attack on Israel was because of the recent announcement during the G-20 Summit in New Delhi on the ambitious IMEEEC that integrates the entire region with a network of railroads.
He told reporters at a joint news conference with the visiting Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese that his view is based on his instinct and does not have any proof.
“I’m convinced one of the reasons Hamas attacked when they did, and I have no proof of this, just my instinct tells me, is because of the progress we were making towards regional integration for Israel, and regional integration overall. We can’t leave that work behind,” Biden said, according to the media reports on Thursday.
The new economic corridor, viewed as an effective challenger to China’s floundering BRI, was jointly announced by the leaders of the US, India, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, France, Germany, Italy, and the European Union on the sidelines of the G-20 Summit in September.
The Corridor comprises an eastern corridor connecting India to the Gulf region and a northern corridor connecting the Gulf region to Europe.
President Biden said in the past few weeks that he has spoken to leaders throughout the region—including King Abdullah of Jordan, President Sisi of Egypt, President Abbas of the Palestinian Authority, and Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman of Saudi Arabia—about making sure there’s real hope in the region for a better future about the need to work toward a greater integration for Israel while insisting that the aspirations of the Palestinian people will be part of that future as well.
