A Knesset committee on Sunday approved plans to build a new international airport in southern Israel, in a major economic boost for the Negev region.
The cross-party initiative, which is expected to be greenlighted by the parliament’s full plenum next week, envisions the airport being built in Moshav Nevatim, five miles southeast of Beersheva, within seven years.
The airport, which will be able handle up to 15 million passengers annually, would create around 50,000 jobs, according to the legislation’s explanatory notes.
“The construction of a new international airport in the Negev Desert is the right thing to do from both a Zionist and a future planning point of view,” Knesset member Ram Ben-Barak, a member of opposition leader Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid Party, told JNS on Sunday.
Ben-Barak, co-sponsor of the bill and a former deputy director of the Mossad, said that the proposal pre-dates the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led onslaught on southern Israel, and was selected over a competing initiative for the construction of an international airport in northern Israel, which is more heavily populated.
The legislation passed its final reading in the Knesset’s Economic Affairs Committee on Sunday.
“I will not rest until the airport is up and running,” said fellow co-sponsor MK Almog Cohen from National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit Party, in a statement. “This is not just a promise; this is a national mission which I am committed to completing for the residents of southern Israel and the whole country.”
“This bill is a game-changer for the future of the Negev, which has endured years of unfulfilled promises,” said Dimona Mayor Benny Biton who attended the parliamentary hearing. “The widespread support for this bill is clear proof that there is a deep understanding – the Negev is the future growth and development hub of Israel in the coming decades.”
However, a travel expert questioned the feasibility of such a major project due to its location.
“I don’t mean to be snide but what incoming tourist will want to fly into Beersheva and then travel up to Jerusalem or Tel Aviv or down to Eilat,” Mark Feldman, Jerusalem director of Diesenhaus Tours, told JNS. “Sorry but [this] seems a pie-in-the-sky scheme and hopefully that’s where it will stay.”
The site of the proposed civilian airport is adjacent to Israeli Air Force’s Nevatim base, which is home to F-35 fighter jets and was targeted by Iran last year.
The future airport at Nevatim is intended to ease congestion at Ben-Gurion International Airport east of Tel Aviv, nearly 60 miles away. Ben-Gurion, Israel’s main international gateway, has an annual capacity of 40 million passengers.
Some 24 million passengers travelled through the airport in the record-breaking year for tourism in Israel in 2019, including more than 4.5 million tourists.
Israel opened Ramon Airport near the Red Sea resort city of Eilat in 2019, with an initial capacity of two million passengers per year and room to expand to more than twice that if needed, but it has failed to gain traction with flyers.
