Canals, Colonialism and Conspiracy: Trans-Palestinian Waterways from Ottoman Era to Social Media

A conspiracy theory about Israel’s current war on Gaza suggests that the Palestinian population is being cleared away to make room for a huge double-lane shipping canal, an alternative to the Suez. Bizarre as this might sound, the idea of waterways across Palestine and present-day Israel has a long history: it starts with imperialist investors eyeing Ottoman Palestine, traverses the complex politics of the post-WW1 Mandates, the Cold War and global capitalism, to the present day – when the Turkish press may have played a key role in conspiracy theories circulating right now.

Dr Sarah Irving is Associate Professor of Modern Middle Eastern History at the University of Staffordshire in Britain. She works primarily on Mandate Palestine and Jordan, with recent publications including (ed) The Social and Cultural History of Mandate Palestine: Essays in Honour of Salim Tamari (Edinburgh University Press 2023). She is also editor-in-chief of the CBRL journal Contemporary Levant.