Africa-Press – Lesotho. Yemen is forcing ships to travel around Africa instead of allowing them to travel through the Red Sea to Israel, causing Israel to lose Billions. The Houthis aim is to obstruct ships from reaching Israel through the Arabian Sea and the Red Sea.
This came in protest of the atrocities Israel is committing against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, killing over 18,000 Palestinians over the last few weeks in bombardment of Gaza.
Yemen’s Houthi threatened all ships heading to Israel, regardless of their nationality, and warned all international shipping companies against dealing with Israeli ports.
“If Gaza does not receive the food and medicine it needs, all ships in the Red Sea bound for Israeli ports, regardless of their nationality, will become a target for our armed forces,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
The Director General of the Port of Eilat discussed the losses incurred by the port, attributing them to threats from Yemen that disrupted about 85% of port’s profits.
Changing the maritime navigation route will raise the prices of imported products by an estimated 3%, which would increase the financial burden on the Israelis by about ten and a half billion shekels, or about 3 billion dollars. The Yemeni threat to the Red Sea maritime routes led to the loss of the port by about 14,000 cars from the middle of last month until today.
The port director further explained that “Israel fears that the closure of Bab al-Mandab to the movement of merchant vessels to Israel through the Red Sea to the port of Eilat or through the Suez Canal would prolong the travel of cargo vessels from the East to Israel about five weeks, as cargo vessels would have to circumvent the African continent at Cape of Good Hope through the Strait of Gibraltar to the Mediterranean.”
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