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Houthis enforce embargo on ships heading to or leaving Israel
(peoplesdispatch.org)
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this post was submitted on 11 Dec 2023
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In full seriousness, beyond posturing and making an ideological statement, how will the Houthi Movement enforce this blockade in any way? They have no navy, no modern anti-ship missiles, no naval Air Force, or any meaningful way to affect shipping in the Red Sea without getting wiped off the face of the Earth by UN anti-piracy naval and air forces in stationed in Djibouti.
They've already been using drones to harass Israeli affiliated ships and even seized one. They don't have to be able to completely stop shipping, just to make it riskier and more expensive to do. That puts direct economic pressure on Israel. There's a good article talking about this in more detail here https://new.thecradle.co/articles-id/14235
But how do they differentiate shipping as to what is Israeli affiliated or not?
There are publicly available databases on ships with pretty detailed information, including their travels. For a fee there are services that provide cargo information as well.
What would stop those services from simply removing the manifests and data of Israeli related ship?
I imagine a certain amount had to be public so the west knows who's ducking sanctions and can prevent import tax evasion, etc.
Edit: meaning it's catch 22. Hide the manifest and not be able to dock anywhere. Or makeb it public and let your enemies know what you're carrying.
Also, it might be the export countries who log the data to show everyone that they're being honest?
No, I just meant remove the manifests from public view.
I am sure that shipping authorities already have that information, they’re not going to random sites for it.
Oh, I see what you mean. It could easily be shared on a need to know basis. I imagine that there's money in it somewhere. Wouldn't be surprised to find that the ports sell the information and the ships can pay like $15/month to l for privacy but want to saveb the cost lol
I don’t know why @ComradeSalad wants to believe Ansar Allah is just three kids in a trenchcoat, incapable of identifying, targeting, or denying corporate shipping vessels from passing through a famously thin & fragile choke point right off their own shores.
It’s likely I think that this has been in their playbook for a years, and the people executing it now have been training for it for who knows how long.
Most of what I hear, it's like Palestine is chaos, which it is, of course. That doesn't mean there aren't Palestinians calmly making decisions. I remember they spoke about a plan to ask their allies for certain types of help when the time's right. We might be seeing that now. I think they've planned for the long haul and I don't think they'll be deterred by Israel's brutality (the opposite, I would believe). It's easy to forget all this when the news is doing war-gore porn 24-7 as if Palestinians are entertainment.
Ships generally have to broadcast a bunch of stuff, like name, from where to where, number of crew etc. constantly while at sea, so all anyone really needs is the ability to receive broadcasts and they can receive those messages and figure out which ships to hit. If a bunch of ships are sending their info but this one isn't you can also assume that that ship is trying to do shifty things so. Besides if they have a lot of people looking at it they can track ships from further away than just right off their coast.
It’s already a logical leap to assume Ansar Allah is using manifest data, before getting to the hypotheticals of shutting down those data services.