After bankrupting Eilat, Yemen announces naval blockade of Israel's Haifa Port in defence of Gaza

Following the shutdown of Eilat Port and aerial blockade, Yemen warns all ships bound for Haifa as it intensifies pressure on Israel over its ongoing siege and bombardment of Gaza.

Yemen, the only state doing anything meaningful to stop the genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza, on Tuesday announced another bold move. In a statement issued on its media channels, the Yemeni Armed Forces (YAF) said that they would “begin enforcing a naval blockade on Haifa Port” in another attempt to make the Israelis pay for their egregious crimes against humanity that continue to be perpetrated for over 19 months in Gaza.

“In response to the Israeli enemy’s brutal escalation against our brothers and families in Gaza — committing dozens of massacres each day and inflicting hundreds of casualties in a genocide the world has never seen before. And in response to the continuing siege and starvation, and the enemy’s refusal to halt its aggression and lift its blockade, the Yemeni Armed Forces, relying on Allah and seeking His aid, have decided — by His grace — to carry out the leadership’s directives and begin enforcing a naval blockade on Haifa Port,” the statement by the YAF read.

The YAF added that shipping firms dealing with the Israelis should treat the Yemeni warning “the utmost seriousness”: “Accordingly, we notify all companies whose vessels are currently at that port or bound for it that, from the moment this statement is issued, Haifa Port has been added to our list of targets, and they must treat what is stated here — and in any future notices — with the utmost seriousness.”

The Israelis will know that these are no empty threats. The Yemenis have already bankrupted the port of Eilat, the only Israeli port on the Red Sea, after relentlessly targeting it for months on end, at times in coordination with Iraq’s Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF), which launched sporadic drone attacks on the port. In July last year, the port’s CEO acknowledged that there was no activity on the port for eight months and revenue had dropped to zero. Soon after, the port declared bankruptcy, with its CEO admitting, “The Yemenis have effectively shut off access to the port.” Eilat was an important economic hub for the Israeli state as it enjoyed exclusive import rights on cars produced in the Far East. In 2010, for example, the genocidal state imported 123,000 vehicles through Eilat Port.

The Yemeni blockade of the port effectively exacted a huge cost on the Israelis for their ongoing genocide. The YAF used its Tuesday statement to highlight the seriousness of its threat to the Haifa port. “This decision follows, by Allah’s favor, our successful imposition of a blockade on Umm al-Rashrash Port (Eilat), which has since ceased operations,” the statement added. “The Yemeni Armed Forces will not hesitate, with Allah’s help, to take any additional measures necessary in support of our oppressed Palestinian people and their valiant resistance.”

Haifa is Israel’s largest port, employing over 1,000 workers and handling significant traffic. In 2022, India’s Adani Group, which has bankrolled Narendra Modi’s Hindu supremacist government, bought the port in a deal upwards of a billion dollars.

Adani Ports’ stock on the Indian stock exchange was trading in the red on Tuesday — the day of the YAF announcement.

Adani Ports and SEZ stock was trading in the red on Tuesday.

India has been one of the staunchest supporters of the Israeli genocide, supplying ordnance to the genocidal state as it has incinerated the defenceless Palestinians.

A collaboration between Adani and Israeli weapons manufacturer Elbit has also seen the Indian conglomerate send made in India drones to Israel during the ongoing genocide. Meanwhile, India used Israeli drones in a recent dogfight with Pakistan, after accusing it of funding a militant attack in Kashmir last month — without presenting any evidence to support the claim.

Birds of the same genocidal feather.

Sending Haifa Port the way of Eilat would be Yemen hitting two genocidal birds with one stone.

This latest Yemeni move comes close on the heels of its attack on Ben Gurion Airport earlier this month. It shut all airport activity for a few hours. Subsequently, the YAF warned airline operators against flying into Tel Aviv as it announced an aerial blockade against all Israeli airports, marking them as “unsafe airports” in a video message. Multiple airlines have since halted operations in the genocidal state. Lufthansa won’t be operating in Israel until June 8, while several other airlines have no plans to resume operations before the end of this month. Ryanair has said that it may stop flying to and from Tel Aviv altogether. “If they’re going to keep being disrupted by these security disruptions, frankly, we’d be better off sending those aircraft somewhere else in Europe,” Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary said on Monday.

Though it falls short of bankrupting the airport as it did with the Eilat port, the Yemeni blockade is clearly restricting the mobility of Israelis — the same people who have kept over 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza in a cage since 2007, unable to leave without the permission of their concentration camp guards in Tel Aviv.

Also read: An immodest proposal

The United States in an unexpected move stopped bombing Yemeni civilians and infrastructure in aid of the Israeli genocide in Gaza earlier this month in exchange for Ansarallah ceasing operations against American ships in their waters. The deal, however, didn’t include Israeli interests. In the absence of Uncle Sam watching their genocidal backs on the Yemeni front, the Israelis have launched solo attacks in Yemen, including the Sana’a airport as well as the port in Hodeidah. Considering that the Americans found it very costly and could not absorb further losses at the hands of the Yemenis, it remains to be seen for how long their Israeli dependency can keep up with its transnational terrorism. The Americans have failed to locate Ansarallah’s leadership in their attempts so far, but it has not stopped the Israelis from declaring plans to assassinate the top Ansarallah leader, Abdul-Malik Badr al-Din al-Houthi, himself. “We will hunt down and eliminate Abdul-Malik al-Houthi in Yemen as well,” Israeli war minister Israel Katz thumped his chest recently.

The Yemenis, however, have been undeterred by the Israeli and American threats. Last Sunday, they launched another attack on Ben Gurion Airport, “using two ballistic missiles: one of them a hypersonic missile of the Palestine-2 type, and with a ballistic missile of the Zulfiqar type.” YAF spokesman Yahya Saree announced that “the operation successfully achieved its objective, causing millions of Zionist occupiers to flee into shelters, halting air traffic at the airport for nearly an hour, by the grace of Allah.”

In the same video speech, Saree implored fellow Muslims to act in the defence of the Palestinians, warning them that the failure to stop the Israelis will only embolden them to increase their barbaric assault in newer territories:

The Yemeni Armed Forces renew their call to the sons of the [Islamic] nation: Has a nation of two billion Muslims truly become incapable of saving two million of its own from genocide and starvation?

This overwhelming failure and helplessness will only encourage the enemy to persist in its aggression against all peoples and nations.

The Yemenis started their attack against Israeli interests in October 2023 in support of the Palestinian resistance as the Israelis launched their genocidal assault on Gaza. They have gradually expanded their area of operations to deter the Israelis from continuing their unabashed genocide and ethnic cleansing campaign.

Ansarallah has consistently maintained that its actions will stop as soon as the Israelis stop killing Palestinians and lift the nearly two-decade-long siege of Gaza. They did exactly that when the Israelis agreed to a ceasefire in January, but resumed attacks after the illegitimate occupation state trashed the deal and resumed the genocide in March.

The YAF repeated the same message in its statement announcing actions against the Haifa Port, “All actions and decisions of the Yemeni Armed Forces directed at the Israeli enemy — whether support operations or restrictions on air and maritime navigation — will cease once the aggression against Gaza stops and the siege is lifted.”

The Israelis could resume normal flights to and from their barbaric state and receive car deliveries to their ports like before the full-throttle genocide, but their lust for Palestinian and Arab blood appears insatiable. Hundreds of thousands of dead Palestinians is not enough. They want more.

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