The Trans-Israel Highway is the first toll highway in Israel, and it is the first national infrastructure project whose construction and operation have been put in the hands of a private for-profit corporation. These two facts reflect the dramatic neo-liberal change in Israel in the past two decades.

Driving Forces: The Trans-Israel Highway and the Privatization of Civil Infrastructures in Israel uses the case of the Trans-Israel Highway to examine the social, environmental, economic, and political ramifications of this change. By means of comprehensive and detailed documentation of the process of planning and building the highway, it shows the great degree of influence of interested corporations on political decision-making processes and on the planning systems themselves.

Using theoretical tools from the discipline of political economics the book sheds light on several core issues that were overlooked in the public debate over the construction of the highway.