The persistent assaults by the Houthis on ships transiting to and from the Red Sea, justified as a show of support against the massacre of Palestinians in Gaza, have had a tangible impact on Israel: the closure of Eilat port, the country’s only maritime gateway to the Red Sea. On 16 July 2025, the port officially suspended all activity, bringing to a close a crisis that began in November 2023, coinciding with the start of Yemeni operations against cargo vessels allegedly linked to or serving Israeli interests.
The figures speak for themselves: in 2023, 134 ships docked at Eilat. The following year, that number plummeted to just sixteen, and in the early months of 2025 only six vessels arrived. The port's primary business was the handling of new vehicles, which made up 75 per cent of its operations and half of Israel’s total car imports. In 2023, around 150,000 vehicles were unloaded at Eilat, but this trade came to a complete halt the following year.
The collapse in traffic caused a corresponding fall in revenue, which dropped from 63 million dollars in 2023 to 12.4 million in 2024. The situation became unsustainable for the Nakash family, which has managed the port since 2012. The port company’s debts are estimated to have reached one million dollars, almost entirely due to unpaid taxes. As a result, on 16 July the Israeli Ports Authority announced the suspension of operations, while the municipality of Eilat declared it had frozen the company’s bank accounts.
The Israeli government built Eilat port in the early years of the state, between 1952 and 1956, on the country’s narrow stretch of coastline on the Gulf of Aqaba, with the aim of providing a strategic alternative to the Suez Canal for trade with Asia and Oceania. It soon became a point of contention with Egypt, which in 1956 and again in 1967 blocked the Strait of Tiran, a crucial passage shaped by the presence of Tiran Island in the Gulf of Aqaba, where the two shores are separated by just twenty kilometres.
Control over these straits determines access to both Eilat and Jordan’s port of Aqaba. These blockades are considered to have contributed to the Suez Canal crisis and the Six-Day War, as Israel regarded them as acts of war justifying military intervention. What Egypt’s government failed to achieve may have now been accomplished by the Houthis, who have not blocked access to the port but have instead dismantled its economic foundation.
