The Submarine Cables

The Geography

Open any map. Draw a line from London to Mumbai. The shortest path passes through the Mediterranean Sea, and at the eastern end of that sea, the line must choose: south through the Suez Canal and Egypt, or northeast through a 12-kilometer strip of land between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea.

That strip of land is Israel. Specifically: the Negev desert, terminating at the port city of Eilat on the Gulf of Aqaba.

This is not metaphor. This is physics. Submarine fiber-optic cables connecting Europe to Asia must physically transit one of three routes:

Google chose Route B.

Submarine Cable Inventory

Six major submarine cable systems land in Israel, connecting the country to Europe, Africa, and Asia:

Blue-Raman: The Egypt Bypass

Google's Blue-Raman cable system is not merely large. It is paradigm-shifting.

The cable consists of two segments that meet on Israeli soil:

• BLUE: France → Italy → Greece → Israel (Mediterranean segment)
• RAMAN: Israel → Jordan → Saudi Arabia → Djibouti → Oman → India (Red Sea/Indian Ocean segment)

Both segments fuse at an underground interconnection point north of Eilat in southern Israel. The cable physically transitions from sea to land, crosses Israeli territory, and returns to sea on the Red Sea side.

At 218 Tb/s (upgradable to 400 Tb/s using space-division multiplexing), Blue-Raman carries more capacity than all other cables landing in Israel combined. It is the single largest data pipe connecting Europe to Asia.

And it transits Israeli sovereign territory.

The Abraham Accords Connection

Blue-Raman's route through Jordan and Saudi Arabia was enabled by the normalization of Israel-Gulf state relations. The 2020 Abraham Accords (Israel-UAE-Bahrain) and the evolving Israel-Saudi relationship created the diplomatic conditions for a cable to physically cross these countries.

The Accords are typically discussed as diplomatic achievements. In infrastructure terms, they are cable routing agreements. Israel transforms from a dead-end on the eastern Mediterranean coast into a hub connecting Europe to the entire Arabian Peninsula and Indian subcontinent.

JONAH: The First Israeli-Owned International Cable

Until 2012, all of Israel's international submarine cable connectivity was owned by foreign entities — primarily Telecom Italia through MedNautilus. Israel was a customer of its own internet backbone.

Then Bezeq International built JONAH (Bezeq International Optical System): a 2,300 km cable from Tel Aviv to Bari, Italy, with 12.8 Tb/s capacity using Alcatel-Lucent submarine networking technology. Extended via Interoute's terrestrial network to London, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Paris, and other European hubs.

The same year, Tamares Telecom (owned by Finnish-Israeli billionaire Poju Zabludowicz) launched a second independent cable to France. In one year, Israel went from one foreign-owned cable system to three independent routes — two Israeli-owned.

Bezeq: The Monopoly and the Corruption

Bezeq is Israel's dominant telecommunications company — founded in 1984 as a government monopoly, privatized in 2005 when a consortium led by Apax Partners, Haim Saban, and the Arkin family paid $972 million for 30% of the company.

In 2010, B Communications (owned by Shaul Elovitch's Eurocom Group) acquired controlling interest for $1.75 billion. Elovitch subsequently became central to Case 4000 — the Netanyahu corruption investigation alleging the Prime Minister provided regulatory favors to Bezeq in exchange for favorable coverage on Elovitch's Walla! news site.

Bezeq's subsidiary, Bezeq International, operates international services including the JONAH cable. The company is listed on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TA-35 Index) and was included in the UN database of companies operating in illegal Israeli settlements (2020).

Urim SIGINT Base

In the Negev desert, approximately 30 kilometers from Beersheba and near kibbutz Urim, sits one of the world's most significant signals intelligence facilities.

The Urim SIGINT Base consists of rows of satellite dishes that intercept:

• Phone calls across the Middle East, Europe, Africa, and Asia
• Emails and digital communications
• Maritime shipping communications (Inmarsat)
• Satellite communications (originally Intelsat, expanded over decades)

Consider the geography: Urim sits in the same Negev desert where Blue-Raman's two cable segments fuse underground. The SIGINT base and the cable interconnection point share the same region. Satellite interception and cable interception converge in the same physical space.

The Snowden Revelations

On September 11, 2013, The Guardian published a leaked document revealing the NSA's intelligence sharing relationship with Israel's Unit 8200 (ISNU — Israeli SIGINT National Unit).

James Bamford (NYT) reported that Snowden told him the transferred data contained "communications — email as well as phone calls — of countless Arab- and Palestinian-Americans whose relatives in Israel and the Palestinian territories could become targets based on the communications."

Additional Snowden Revelations

• A 2008 NSA document ranked Israel as the "third most aggressive intelligence service against the US"
• The "Gladiator" proposal (2003-2004): Israel proposed a partnership where the US would pay "hundreds of millions" to fund Israeli intelligence activities. Documents contain "receipts for $500,000 in cash payments to Israeli officials for unspecified purposes"
• US/UK intelligence hacked Israeli drone feeds to monitor Gaza operations and potential Iran strike
• The $52.6 billion intelligence "black budget" confirms US counter-intelligence targets Israel

The relationship is simultaneously collaborative (raw intelligence sharing) and adversarial (mutual espionage). Israel is both partner and target — receiving raw NSA cable intercepts while being the "third most aggressive" spy against the US.

GCHQ Tempora: The Comparison Model

If there is any doubt that intelligence agencies tap submarine cables, GCHQ's Tempora program eliminates it.

Tempora (operational since late 2011) intercepts internet traffic directly from fiber-optic backbone cables landing in the UK. The program:

• Buffers "most Internet communications that are extracted from fibre-optic cables"
• Places intercepts at landing stations with "the knowledge of companies owning either the cables or landing stations"
• Makes no distinction between citizens and suspects
• Required secret agreements with commercial "intercept partners"
• Companies forbidden to reveal warrants; can be compelled to comply
• By May 2012: 300 GCHQ + 250 NSA analysts sorting intercepted data

The NSA's own programs (FAIRVIEW, BLARNEY, STORMBREW, OAKSTAR) perform the same function on US soil and overseas — "collection of communications on fiber cables and infrastructure as data flows past."

The Complete Stack

This is the sixth letter in "The Invisible Nation" series. Each letter has documented one layer of Israeli cyber infrastructure. Together, they form a picture unlike any other nation:

No other nation simultaneously operates at:

• Physical cable layer (land bridge + owned cable)
• SIGINT layer (cable-tapping + satellite + embassy posts)
• Cloud layer (offshore-registered providers)
• VPN layer (controls the privacy tools people use to hide)
• Application layer (residential proxy network, offensive tools)
• Talent layer (military intelligence → commercial pipeline)
• Intelligence sharing layer (raw NSA feed + own collection)

And all of this while appearing in global threat intelligence databases with 7 IPs and zero honeypot hits (034A).