Free Republic

Saudi authorities have permitted the use of lethal force to clear land for a futuristic desert city being built by dozens of Western companies, an ex-intelligence officer has told the BBC. Col Rabih Alenezi says he was ordered to evict villagers from a tribe in the Gulf state to make way for The Line, part of the Neom eco-project. One of them was subsequently shot and killed for protesting against eviction. The Saudi government and Neom management refused to comment. Neom, Saudi Arabia's $500bn (£399bn) eco-region, is part of its Saudi Vision 2030 strategy which aims to diversify the kingdom's...

Saudi Arabia has been left humiliated after being forced to scale back its multi-trillion-dollar plans for a 106-mile linear megacity in the desert to just over one per cent of its original length. The ambitious project, named the Line, forms part of the kingdom's lucrative Neom infrastructure project - which had been slated to cost up to $1.5trillion.

When I first read about Neom in October 2017, it was a crazy, whacked-out idea for a pop-up city in the desert of Saudi Arabia. When completed, it will be 33 times the size of New York City. Today, Saudi officials say it is 20% completed, and this video proves it.

NEOM in Saudi Arabia will be home to the Kingdom's first Yotel hotel, it has been announced.Yotel will open the doors on the NEOM property in 2025 at the Oxagon development in Saudi Arabia.It will be the first hotel in Oxagon, which will be the home of advanced and clean industries in NEOM...The hotel's location is at the heart of the integrated live-work-play Research and Innovation (R&I) district of Oxagon with a dedicated R&I campus.Strategically located on NEOM's Red Sea coast, Oxagon is reimagining the traditional industrial city by developing multiple thriving residential and business communities.Additional to the R&I district,...

The promotional material is striking: two mirror-encased skyscrapers stretching more than 100 miles across a swathe of desert and mountain terrain, providing a future home for 9 million people. In short, economists, architects and analysts are not quite sure. So extravagant is Saudi Arabia’s plan to create an urban utopia that even those working on the project, known as the Line, do not yet know if its scale and scope can ever be realised. Neom has consistently raised eyebrows due to proposed flourishes such as flying taxis and robot maids, even as architects and economists have questioned its feasibility. The...

Dear liberals: Pretty soon, your iPhone could be assembled in a country where homosexuality is punishable by death, and religious dissidents are sometimes beheaded. In what could be a victory for Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman’s effort to attract tech companies to help diversify Saudi Arabia’s economy away from oil and gas, Foxconn, the Taiwanese consumer tech giant that’s one of Apple’s biggest contractors, has reportedly submitted a proposal to build a $9 billion factory in the Kingdom. WSJ reports that the kingdom “is reviewing an offer from the company, formally known as Hon Hai Precision Industry, to build a...

In what could be a landmark in the Middle East’s history, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu flew to Saudi Arabia on Sunday to meet the country’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Israeli media reported. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, currently on a tour of the region, was also reportedly present at the meeting in Neom, Saudi Arabia. Netanyahu was accompanied by the head of Israeli intelligence agency Mossad, Yossi Cohen, who is widely regarded to have played a key role in preparing the groundwork for the recent normalization of diplomatic relations between Israel and the Arab Gulf states, news...

Israel pitched to India this weekend its idea of a new transportation corridor in the Middle East bypassing the most critical oil chokepoint in the world which is very close to Iran, the Strait of Hormuz. During the Mediterranean Dialogues conference in Rome on Saturday, Israel’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and Minister of Intelligence, Israel Katz, met with India’s Minister of External Affairs, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, to discuss bilateral trade and presented Israel’s “Tracks for Regional Peace” initiative.

Islamists Claim Search for Mt Sinai is Jewish-American Plot to Conquer Saudi Arabia By Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz July 24, 2019 , 2:38 pm “I have given the hill country of Seir as a possession to Esau.” Deuteronomy 2:5 (The Israel Bible™) Islamists responded to a Christian investigator’s claims to have found Mount Sinai with death threats, claiming the search for the Biblical mountain was part of a Jewish-U.S. plot to conquer Saudi Arabia. An expert whose own searches for Biblical artifacts have attracted controversy commented, emphasizing that Biblical archaeology should bind all of mankind, Jew Christian and Muslim, together in...

Bible scholars have claimed there is evidence that suggests the peak Jabal al-Lawz in the Middle Eastern kingdom is actually Mount Sinai. The site is a 8,460 foot peak known as the "mountain of almonds", located in north east Saudi Arabia near the border with Jordan. Moses leads the Israelites to the mountain which is enveloped by fire, smoke and thunder, according to the Book of Exodus in the Bible. The prophet then ascends Mount Sinai where he convenes with God to receive the Ten Commandments. Experts from the Doubting Thomas Research Foundation have backed the location of Sinai, and...

Saudi Arabia will turn its northwestern Red Sea coast into a luxury tourism resort to rival the French Riviera, its Public Investment Fund (PIF) announced Wednesday. The Amaala development would be 'a natural extension of the Mediterranean Sea, and dubbed the Riviera of the Middle East', according to the country's top sovereign wealth fund. Located in the Prince Mohammed bin Salman Nature Reserve, the resort will feature hotels, private villas, an arts academy and a yacht club.

Late last week, reports began to surface that Saudi Arabia has made a deal with the Vatican to construct churches for Christian worshippers. Sadly, that appears to have been #FakeNews. The Vatican has denied making a deal with Saudi Arabia to build churches for Christian worshippers in the Arab country. However, it does appear real news from the desert kingdom shows signs that it is moving to modernize. Perhaps the most dramatic of these is that Saudi women are learning to drive motorcycles. The Crown Prince is also strengthening ties with a key regional power: Egypt. A recent bilateral economic...

The handover would follow the arrests of 11 princes and four ministers in an anti-corruption crackdown which has been referred to a power grab. Billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal who holds stakes in Twitter and Citigroup was among those locked up when the five-star Ritz Carlton was transformed into a prison. Dozens of officials, business leaders and their families are being held in the luxury hotels with video emerging appearing to show them sleeping on the floor.

Saudi Arabia is the world's largest oil exporter, but falling oil prices have made it more difficult for the country to pay its oil workers. Now the Saudi Arabian government has come up with a project that could give its economy a boost: a $500 billion mega-city that will connect to Jordan and Egypt and be powered completely by renewable energy. On Tuesday, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman announced the project, called NEOM, at the Future Investment Initiative conference in Riyadh. It will be financed by the Saudi government and private investors, according to Reuters. The business and industrial-focused...

The half-a-trillion-dollar initiative to build a tristate city at the Saudi, Egyptian, and Jordanian border in the Gulf of Aqaba will more than likely lead to Riyadh recognizing Israel and integrating Tel Aviv into the project. The ambitious Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman unveiled a $500 billion project at an investment forum earlier this week in an effort to bring some serious substance to his Vision 2030 project of fundamentally diversifying his country’s oil-dependent economy in the coming decade. The proposal calls for a gigantic city called NEOM to be built at the entrance to the Gulf of Aqaba...