The Israeli logistics company Trucknet has successfully brought ten trucks across a new 2,550-kilometer overland route between the port of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, across Saudi Arabia and Jordan, and into Israel, it was revealed on Saturday.
The Israeli news website Walla reported that the pilot project was the result of a deal with Emirati shipping company Puretrans FZCO, and the Dubai port operating company DP WORLD, to transport goods from Dubai to the Israeli port of Haifa, and back.
The new, overland route could emerge as an alternative to traditional shipping through the Red Sea and the Bab-el-Mandeb strait, where international shipping is currently under regular missile attack from Iranian-backed Houthi rebel forces in Yemen.
“The price is about 1.2 dollars per km, a little more expensive than sea freight on normal days, but cheaper than the freight prices now,” Walla reports, noting that the journey takes two days. A shorter 1,700-km route from Bahrain may also be possible.
The journey may also save time: it takes at least ten days to make the same journey via ship through the Suez Canal, and a month when avoiding the Red Sea and traveling around the African continent.
The attacks by the Houthi rebels could, ironically, therefore boost dormant peace efforts by Israel and Saudi Arabia, which were said to include a potential overland trade route.
In his speech in September at the opening of the United Nations General Assembly, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sketched a potential route that would connect the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean and the Atlantic Ocean via the Gulf States, the Arabian Peninsula, and — finally — Israel, bypassing the Red Sea. He explained that peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia could make such a route possible, and that it would herald the arrival of a “new Middle East.”
Two weeks later, Hamas attacked.
In the course of the war, during which Israel has been attacked on five fronts — all controlled by Iranian terrorist proxies — the Houthis have not only fired missiles and drones at southern Israel, but have also attacked international ships in the Red Sea.
In February 2021 — just weeks after taking office — President Joe Biden delisted the Houthis as a terrorist organization — a decision that the administration has begun to reconsider, but has not yet reversed, even as the Houthis attack global shipping.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
