Twelve per cent of global trade passes through the Red Sea and the Suez Canal, including an estimated 40 per cent of trade between Europe and Asia. Such figures underlie the growing international concern that attacks on vessels carrying these goods by Houthi groups in Yemen, proclaiming solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza under assault by Israel, will escalate towards a more general regional war and disrupt the world economy. The retaliatory airstrikes launched by US and UK forces on missile and drone bases point in the same direction, because of Iranian support for the Houthis.
Despite the expressed desire of regional actors and these major powers to avoid spreading the Gaza war, the competing logics at play can create unintended and unanticipated escalations of conflict. That can be seen on the Israeli-Lebanese border with Hizbullah, with the Israeli assassinations of resistance group leaders and especially with Israeli leader Binyamin Netanyahu’s determination to continue the war in Gaza until Hamas is destroyed. The catastrophic death toll of more than 24,000 Palestinians so far and the imperative need for humanitarian relief set the context for Houthi attacks on international shipping.
These attacks have rightly been condemned in a United Nations Security Council resolution last week. But all those involved now face a choice between a military escalation, which could draw in Iran, and reinforced pressure on Israel to call a ceasefire that would ease regional tensions and set the scene for potential political negotiations on a two-state settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian question. Even though such a scenario flies in the face of Netanyahu’s repeatedly expressed hostility to such an outcome, and to the search for a normalisation of relations with Israel bypassing the Palestinian question before the Hamas atrocities on October 7th last year, it has rapidly become the essential condition for regional and international policy-making on the crisis.
Reinforcing international pressure on Israel to call a ceasefire in Gaza is much the better choice in this dangerous moment, rather than escalating attacks on Houthi targets. That choice should feed into the European Union’s policy-making. Divisions on a response to the Red Sea attacks among EU members reflect those on Gaza, with the Dutch and Germans more supportive of the US-UK position and Spain, Italy and France more reserved.
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The dangers of escalation can bring them together by joining the need to protect freedom of navigation with the imperative need to end the fighting in Gaza, relieve the suffering and open up political negotiations on a peace plan and reconstruction.
An approach along these lines is a real test for the EU as it contemplates the alternative of a dangerous Middle Eastern military escalation.