The government on Sunday approved the economic peace corridor project as a national project. The plan, the brainchild of Vice Premier Shimon Peres, stretches 500 kilometers from the Gulf of Eilat along the Arava and Jordan Valleys to the Yarmuch River.

Projects include the 160 kilometer Red Sea to Dead Sea channel, dedicated to preventing the Dead Sea from drying up; tourist projects; an Israeli-Jordanian airport in the Aqaba region; and an Israeli-Palestinian industrial park in the northern West Bank. By being declared a national project, all the individual projects will be given high priority and proceed along an accelerated approval track.

Other projects include agricultural development; water desalination and electricity generation in the Arava; building an agriculture industry region in the Jordan Valley with the aid of the Japanese government; and connecting a rail line between Israel and Jordan. Connecting with the
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Jordanian network will in the future allow the transfer of goods from Haifa to Iraq through Jordan, a route once active before 1948.

Extra-government funding will cover most of the plan with the assistance of the World Bank, a host of countries, the business sector and donors. An advisory committee made up of former presidents and government heads from various countries will be established.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said the project is very important in every regard concerning regional stability and that it would promote national interests of the first degree through economic development. The plan will merit precedence in all government ministries.

Environmental activists Friends of the Earth described the government decision to support the Red-to-Dead canal as "irresponsible." According to Gideon Brumberg, head of the Israeli branch of Friends of the Earth, "the decision worries us because nothing has been done to check the expected impact of the canal on the Dead Sea and the Arava. How can it be declared a welcome project in advance?"