The Yemeni Houthi militia, allied with Iran, hijacked a cargo ship in the Red Sea this Sunday due to the Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip. The Israeli army considers it a “very serious incident with global consequences,” although it clarifies that the ship is neither Israeli nor had Israelis on board. Defining it as such, the Houthis warn that they will continue their military operations until the end of the “terrible aggression” against their “Palestinian brothers in Gaza and the West Bank.” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks of a “forward leap in Iranian aggression” by a rebel militia that has already fired rockets and drones against the Jewish state in recent weeks.
Netanyahu has indicated that the ship, which traveled from Turkey to India, was owned by a British company and operated by a Japanese company. Al Arabiya television identified it as the Galaxy Leader, a Bahamian-flagged cargo ship owned by Ray Shipping, a company partly controlled by a British-Israeli businessman, Abraham Ungar, one of Israel’s richest men. Another ship linked to his companies suffered an explosion in the Gulf of Oman in 2021, which Israel also blamed on Iran.
Two U.S. Defense Department sources confirmed to the Associated Press that the rebels attacked the freighter by lowering a rope from a helicopter. Yahya Saree, a spokesman for the Houthi military, said the ship was now in a port under their control, as is the case in much of Yemen, including the capital. “We are treating the occupation in accordance with Islamic principles and values,” he added in a statement. Netanyahu assures that there are 25 people, including Mexicans, Ukrainians, Bulgarians and Filipinos. Not Israeli.
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Shortly before, the Houthis had announced that they would attack ships owned or operated by Israeli companies flying their flag or sailing into the country. The rebel militia has fired drones and projectiles against Eilat – Israel’s southernmost city, close to Saudi Arabia – in “revenge” for the deaths in the Gaza Strip, which number more than 13,000.
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Meanwhile, this Sunday in Gaza, the Red Crescent evacuated 31 babies from the main Al Shifa hospital, occupied since last Wednesday by Israeli armored vehicles and soldiers who searched – so far unsuccessfully – the famous Hamas command center of the Israeli army placed it in its basements and Tunnels.
Israel, needing a positive photograph in Gaza to compensate for the destruction caused by its bombings, had suggested it, but the leadership refused. After all, it was a third party, as requested by the hospital. This Saturday, a humanitarian evaluation team made up of staff from various UN agencies became the first from an international organization to gain access to the center, which is running low on electricity, food and water and is therefore no longer functioning as such. The team, led by the World Health Organization (WHO) and in coordination with the Israeli army, has described it as a “death zone” where the situation is “desperate” and there are signs of shelling and gunfire, “obviously.” the WHO said in a statement. For safety reasons, the team was only there for an hour.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the evacuated babies were “very sick” and were transported in ambulances along with six health workers and 10 family members. The vehicles were from the Red Crescent, which refused to carry out the operation alone and without United Nations umbrella after Israel bombed one of its convoys at the gates of the same hospital on the 4th. The babies, premature babies and whoever ended up lying on a stretcher covered in aluminum foil to maintain their body heat because the incubators had no electricity, were transferred to the neonatal intensive care unit at Al-Helal Al-Emirati, a hospital in the city Rafah in the south of the Gaza Strip, which is partially functional.
There are none in operation in the north of the strip. The WHO said new missions are being prepared over the next 24 to 72 hours to urgently transport patients and health workers remaining in Al Shifa to two hospitals in the south of the Gaza Strip. The final green light depends on the guarantee of safe passage by all parties to the conflict. The problem, he noted, is that these two medical centers are “already operating beyond their capacity,” so the new referrals will “increase pressure on already stretched health workers and resources.”
According to the UN team, around 260 patients and 25 health workers remain in Al Shifa. There are no longer any displaced people, who numbered in the tens of thousands at the height of the airstrikes. On Saturday, Israeli troops, who had already occupied the center, issued the evacuation order for the 2,500 people still at the site. The Palestinians left towards the south, waving white cloths in the shape of a flag so that no one could open fire on them.
“Very minor” fringe
At the diplomatic level, Qatar’s Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al Thani said on Sunday that there were only “very minor” problems remaining in reaching an agreement between Israel and Hamas on the release of dozens of hostages kidnapped by the fundamentalist militia October 7 attack. “The challenges facing the agreement are simply practical and logistical,” he said at a news conference in Doha with EU diplomacy chief Josep Borrell. Shortly beforehand, the White House made it clear that the pact had not yet been sealed. “We have not yet reached an agreement, but we continue to work hard to achieve it,” National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson wrote on X (formerly Twitter).
According to the Haaretz newspaper, the Israeli government is divided over the deal: between those who favor expanding the offensive to pressure Hamas to lower its demands and those who fear the opportunity will be missed and more hostages will die in the bombings. It would include the release of 50 to 70 mothers and children in exchange for a humanitarian break of three to five days, as well as the release of 150 Palestinian minors and women. They would be among around 240 hostages in the Gaza Strip. They are mainly in the hands of Hamas, but also Islamic Jihad, other smaller armed groups and even civilians.
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