The disruption of maritime trade in the Red Sea due to Houthi attacks on cargo ships has prompted Israeli cargo and logistics companies to bypass the dangerous waters and switch to alternative land routes to transport goods from the Far East to Israel via Saudi Arabia and Jordan.
Israel-based freight forwarder Mentfield Logistics is among the companies involved in establishing a commercial trade route that bypasses the Red Sea by sending goods from the ports of Dubai and Bahrain overland via trucks that pass through the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Jordan, and end up in Israeli ports.
Another Israeli-based company, Trucknet, has also established such a route.
While Jordan has had a peace treaty with Israel since 1994, and the UAE and Bahrain signed the Abraham Accords normalizing relations with Israel in 2020, Saudi Arabia does not have diplomatic relations with Israel, although some progress has been made in this direction under the auspices of the US- a.
“Ships coming from China and India unload containers at the ports of Bahrain and Dubai, and then the cargo is loaded onto Jordanian trucks and transported overland to Israel via the King Hussein border crossing with Jordan, where Israeli trucks await the goods,” Mentfield CEO Omer Izhari he told The Times of Israel.
“Dozens of trucks a day, not only here, facilitate this route to shorten the delivery time of goods from textiles to electronics, raw materials for industry, metal pipes and aluminum,” he added.
Izhari explained that the goods, while passing through Saudi Arabia and Jordan, are not tracked as goods destined for Israel or Israeli because they are in transit until they reach the port of Haifa.
Compared to going around Africa, “the overland route saves about 20 days, so instead of 50 to 60 days, the goods arrive within 20 to 25 days from China to Israel,” Izhari said.
