It started in Suez and is approaching Malacca. The pressure on global maritime trade nodes has become a little more acute this Wednesday. The push against Israel launched by the Yemeni rebels in the Red Sea has taken an unexpected turn, although more focused, in Malaysia. Its prime minister has announced that he will ban the entry of any Israeli-flagged cargo ships. Anwar Ibrahim has added an express veto for merchant ships of the tenth largest shipping company in the world, of Israeli nationality: “My government withdraws authorization for Zim to dock in any Malaysian port.”
The measure, “with immediate effect,” has been justified by Anwar as a response “to the violation of fundamental humanitarian principles and international legality in Gaza” by Israel, whose army he blames “for massacres and atrocities against Palestinian civilians.” “. Likewise, ships bound for Israel will be prohibited from loading merchandise in Malaysian ports.
Although Malaysia does not maintain diplomatic relations with Israel, since 2002 it has allowed Israeli Zim ships to dock in its ports. Since 2005 they could also unload merchandise. But the dramatic situation in Palestine would have made the current prime minister change his mind.
The multinational Zim was founded by Jews in Palestine in 1945. Haifa is its port of reference and it is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, where it has dropped 43% this year. However, at the close of Tuesday, it had managed to recover the price it had on the eve of the Hamas assault, the derivatives of which had caused it to lose up to a third of its value.
According to some standards, Zim is the tenth largest container shipping company in the world by traffic volume (2.1% of the world total). It operates in more than 80 countries, although only eight of the more than 120 freighters it manages would be its property.
“The humanitarian crisis is on its way to affecting not only Palestine or the rest of the Middle East, but it will mark global relations for many years,” Anwar warned a month ago in San Francisco. He was participating in the Asia-Pacific summit and did not bite his tongue when he spoke, during the lunch of heads of state and government, among whom were Joe Biden and Xi Jinping: “What is happening in Gaza, the way that their mass destruction is tolerated is clearly an abandonment of moral responsibility.
According to the Malaysian prime minister, his government has already received three requests from US diplomacy to classify Hamas as a “terrorist organization.” Something that, as he has said, he never intends to do. Then as now, the organization’s leaders are received with honors in Malaysia. Although five years ago, a Hamas member was shot dead outside his home in Kuala Lumpur, allegedly by Mossad agents.
The septuagenarian Anwar Ibrahim has only been leading the country for a year, but he has been part of the Malaysian political landscape, both in government and opposition, for decades. Including the years he spent behind bars convicted “for sodomy” and “for corruption”, charges according to him unfounded, the product of the machinations of his adversaries. Making merit at Israel’s expense can only bring him votes among the Malay majority.
In any case, Malaysia is not alone in Asia, where much more populous Muslim-majority countries, such as Indonesia, Bangladesh or Pakistan, do not recognize Israel either. Only to Palestine. In the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur, a stadium was filled in solidarity with the Palestinians, but their demonstrations have been dwarfed by those in Indonesia. Jakarta’s Merdeka Square, one of the largest in the world, was filled last month with two million supporters of the cause, according to organizers.
As a side effect, in this Muslim corner of Southeast Asia, the boycott of Israeli companies or those that allegedly support Israel in the current war has been reinforced. For example, the McDonald’s hamburger chain was crucified on Indonesian networks when it was revealed that it was giving away McMenús to Israeli soldiers. The boycott emptied its restaurants in the archipelago, forcing the local franchise to give 50% discounts and to ensure, actively and passively, its zero relationship with franchisees from other countries, as well as its sympathy for “the resistance.” So much so that he even decorated his premises with balloons in the colors of the Palestinian flag and dressed his employees in the typical kufiya.
A certain list of 121 brands, widely disseminated on social networks, has made an impact on supermarkets and coffee chains and fast food restaurants. The networks have not even forgiven the wife of the co-founder of Grab – a mix of Uber and Glovo very popular in Southeast Asia – for a summer post on Instagram – now recovered – in which she declared herself “completely in love with Israel” during their holidays. Among the many who recorded themselves uninstalling the app was also Prime Minister Anwar’s daughter.
The Malay Peninsula opened to the world centuries ago at the docks of Malacca, one of the nodes of the first globalization. In the current capital, Kuala Lumpur, the exit to the sea is Kelang, the twelfth port in the world and a hub for container traffic originating from or destined for the South China Sea, only behind Singapore.
In the Red Sea, the acts of piracy by Yemeni rebels to – they say – stop the slaughter in Gaza, threaten to strangle more than just the Israeli economy. Everything is connected and, targeting the Israeli port of Eilat, they have also put the Suez Canal in check. One of the few capitals in which this challenge seems to present at least a positive derivative is Bangkok.
Thailand’s Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin sees his project to create a land corridor to transport containers from a “new” port in the Andaman Sea to another “new” port in the Gulf of Siam now looking a little less quixotic . A “land bridge,” they call it. In reality, a fast and priority corridor from coast to coast, which would however imply added costs of unloading, land transportation and new cargo. All this, for a modest saving of time. But it would prevent countries like China from having to enter the potentially politically problematic waters of the Strait of Malacca.
However, Beijing, which a few years ago was going all out, probing a real canal – like the Panama Canal, on the Isthmus of Kra – has reacted coldly to the Buddhist – and Solomonic – middle path adopted by the Thai government, very conditioned by the military and its equidistance between Washington and Beijing.
Putting water between the three troubled provinces of southern Thailand – with a Malay and Muslim population – and the rest of the country would be a very risky bet. A journey that the military is not willing to undertake.
Meanwhile, the United States, whose green light for the Israeli bombing and invasion of Gaza remains defiantly green – and not amber – 75 days later, is striving to put together a naval coalition destined for the Red Sea, capable of dismasting the challenge launched by the ragged Houthis from the capital of Yemen. World trade is at stake, or at least it is a question of who has the right to corner whom. But everything is interconnected and, in the East, as we have seen, it is not even enough to know where, when and how the spark will fly.
(Below, tweet with which Zim celebrated a month and a half ago the incorporation of three new freighters powered by liquefied gas for its routes between Asia and the United States)