A beach along Israel’s coast. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

CTech – Dutch engineering and project management consulting firm Royal Haskoning DHV has won a tender from the Israeli Ministry of Transportation to examine the planning and economic viability of building an artificial island off the coast of Israel to house an airport, a Transportation Ministry spokesman told Calcalist Tuesday.

Royal Haskoning DHV is working on the project with Israel-based infrastructure planning company Aviv AMCG, a subsidiary of Matrix IT. The two companies started the assessment approximately two weeks ago, Margalit Mosse Friedberg, Aviv AMCG’s director of the project’s local task force, said in a Tuesday interview with Calcalist.

In 2002, the Israeli government approved a plan to construct two artificial islands off the country’s shores, specifying one for an international airport and one for housing.

During a cabinet meeting in January 2018, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu resurfaced the idea to construct artificial islands in Israel’s territorial waters as a solution for Israel’s finite territory. In a cabinet meeting in July, Netanyahu instructed a team of ministers to advance the plan in order to replace Tel Aviv’s domestic Sde Dov airport.