Prone to the celebration of the technological milestones, the israeli authorities have tiptoed on the entry into service of the first high-speed train, which from this weekend enlanza directly to the millennial Jerusalem with the brand-new Tel Aviv. In fact, when the ottomans tended in 1892 the first railway line from the Holy City, the jewish settlers had not yet founded the great city coastal. Approved the project in 2001, the works should be completed in 2008, but the first train that travelled in a little more than 30 minutes the 57 miles that separate the two largest conurbations of the country is not broke until the evening of the Saturday of the station of jerusalem, 80 meters under the ground and safe from attacks atomic.
“you do not need to change trains at the Ben Gurion airport?”, it was one of the first trips of the BIRD King David the genealogist Irit Shem-Tov, retired at 62 years old. Benjamin Netanyahu opened a year ago, the first stretch up to the air terminal. Now the prime minister has been absent in the discreet ceremony that preceded the entry into operation.
All the tribes of the Hebrew State were on board the convoy that headed to Tel Aviv to 13.02 Sunday from the terminal Isaac Navon, the first israeli president of sephardic origin. Military of both sexes with the assault rifle M-16 on a shoulder strap, students, ultra-orthodox of a yeshiva (rabbinic school) absorbed in prayer, palestinian families in East Jerusalem for a visit to Jaffa, employees of start-up clinging to the laptop and lay students, many students.
Sivi Kivin, 27 years old, moves three times a week to Tel Aviv University to complete post-graduate studies in artistic design that is not offered at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, in his city. “This train is a silent revolution,” said the young man, as he watched by the window the traffic jam on the motorway, shortly before the convoy stopped at the station Hagana (the paramilitary organization-jewish, who fought against the british troops under the mandate of Palestine). “By car it takes me almost an hour, double that in peak period, and in Tel Aviv it’s almost impossible to park,” acknowledged with an air of disbelief after the short trip. “In addition, this is the first energized power line from Israel, without diesel locomotives”.
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After the prime minister, Ariel Sharon, gave the banderazo output to the high-speed Jerusalem-Tel Aviv in 2001, the work of strategic interest languished in the intricate bureaucracy of israel. The economic daily Globes reported that the electrification projects proposed by the public company Railways of Israel were “very professional” and the Ministry of Finance had to replantearlo all in 2008.
The Ministry of Transport awarded in 2015, the electrification of the first railway line in the country to Sociedad Española de Montajes Industriales (SEMI), a subsidiary of the ACS group. The tender also included the installation of infrastructures in 12 other lines, in a total of 420 kilometres of track. The process for challenging the award on the part of other companies, such as the French Alstom, forced finally a new delay of two years.
The train of high-speed Jerusalem-Tel Aviv criss-crossed the hills of ancient Judea to more than 120 kilometers per hour to join the middle of two cities that show the two opposite faces of tradition and modernity, rigour religious forehead laxity secular, of the same country. While in the hedonistic Tel Aviv is only 17% of the citizens observe the sabbath, in the pious Jerusalem, fulfilled to the letter the precept of the 66% of your neighbors.
“In Jerusalem, 50 years are like 200 in the rest of Israel”, used to highlight the writer Amos Oz, born in the Holy City and that he lived his last years in Tel Aviv. The train linking two cities nearby, but with souls separated, represents a jump of dimension bible for the jewish State. Not only because it reaches almost 800 metres of altitude in a short distance from the level of the sea, through 38 kilometres of tunnels and 7.5 viaducts. Not even for the additional cost that has risen above the 1,800 million euros, the final bill of the line. It marks a milestone because it begins to put an end to the gap on which satirised the author of A history of love and darkness.
As nearly everything in the Holy Land, the new high-speed line nor escapes the tension of the conflict in the middle East. Two of its sections beyond the Green Line —the dividing line drawn after the armistice of 1949— and penetrate into the territory of the west bank, occupied by Israel since 1967. The Palestinian Authority denounced in the opening of the first phase that Israel used “illegal and in their own benefit,” palestinian land occupied in the valley of Latrún, crossed in its greater part by means of a tunnel.
“I liked it. From now on I will come by train”, said pleased Irit Shem-Tov among the heterogeneous crowd of the platforms of Hagana celebrating with their presence the arrival of a train was made to wait.
