A community exploration into connectivity, peace, and shared prosperity in the Middle East through modern high-speed rail infrastructure.
Few things in the world today are as sad and depressing as the political situation in the Middle East. Having had the privilege of once spending a few weeks in this amazing corner of the world (Turkey and Syria, many years ago in the late 1990s), my main takeaway was that the people there all seemed very nice, cared about pretty much the same things most people everywhere tend to care about, and showed a level of hospitality that was completely off the charts. Based on anecdotal evidence, this appears to be a common observation across the entire region. They probably all deserve a lot better. It seems implausible that most of them would want the constant violence and war. And yet, the prospects of peace seem to be slipping further away by the day.
Now, peace may be possible in theory (it’s happened before, albeit elsewhere). But there isn’t much—in the grand scheme of things, at least—that any one individual can do to effect change, and it’s gotten increasingly difficult to even imagine how the region might resolve its many conflicts. That said, maybe imagining how things might evolve once there is peace is not that hard.
So, let’s use our imagination and assume for a second that—by some miracle and against all odds, maybe years from now, who knows?—peace has somehow been reached. The fighting is over, the key issues have been settled, and we’re seeing the first generation of post-war children growing up. What would this aspiring region need in order to make progress? A robust high-speed rail network for starters! In fact, did you know there once was a rail network that connected London to Cairo (almost)? What if we could rebuild it and then some?
Enter Levantrain, a place on the internet to imagine a new Middle East railway system—connecting all five countries of the Levant (Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, and Palestine), with each other and with their more-or-less rail-enabled neighbors (Turkey, Egypt, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia).
This site will be a shared sketchbook for ideas, conversations, and artifacts regarding a modern high-speed rail infrastructure and what it would mean for daily life, economic opportunity, and long-term peace across borders.
Thanks for checking us out!
Tim Bonnemann
August 2025