The Cradle, February 19, 2024 —
An Israel official has explained how one key Indian port is being used to help bypass Yemen’s Red Sea blockade.
An Indian trade union that operates at multiple ports across the nation has refused to load or offload ships carrying weapons to Israel, days after the announcement of New Delhi sending Hermes 900 “killer” drones to Tel Aviv.
“Port workers, part of labor unions, would always stand against the war and killing innocent people like women and children,” the Water Transport Workers Federation of India, representing over 3,500 workers at major ports in the country, said in a statement.
“The recent attack of Israel on Gaza plunging thousands of Palestinians into immense suffering and loss. Women and children have been blown to pieces in the war. Parents were unable to recognize their children killed in bombings which were exploding everywhere,” the statement continued.
In an interview with Middle East Eye, the general secretary of the union, T. Narendra Rao, said, “If any vessel or any ship is carrying the arms or ammunitions or weaponized cargo to Israel, we decided to boycott. We will not cooperate with that.”
However, Rao added to the UK-based news website that the union has not yet come across any ships loaded with weapons for Israel and that the statement was made pre-emptively.
The Water Transport Workers Federation works at 11 major ports in India, however the union does not organize at the Mundra Port, which is run by the Adani Group, a company with a majority stake in the joint enterprise with Israel’s largest military manufacturer Elbit Systems.
Israeli Minister of Transport and Road Safety Miri Regev was shown to be at Mundra detailing how the port is being used to bypass Yemen’s Red Sea blockade of Israeli-linked ships.
Regev explained that a 2,550-kilometer route has been established from the Mundra port to the UAE by sea, where the cargo will then be transported by road through Saudi Arabia and Jordan to Israel.