Eilat Port to lay off half of workers amid Red Sea shipping crisis, Houthi attacks

Half the workers at Eilat Port are on the verge of losing their jobs after the seaport took a major financial hit due to the crisis in Red Sea shipping lanes, Israel’s main labor federation says.

Eilat sits on a northern tip of the Red Sea and was one of the first ports to be affected as shipping firms rerouted vessels to avoid attacks by the Houthis in Yemen.

The Histadrut labor federation, the umbrella organization for hundreds of thousands of public sector workers, says port management has announced it intends to fire half of the 120 employees. The dock workers will hold a protest later today, it says.

Officials at the port did not immediately respond for comment.

Eilat, which primarily handles car imports and potash exports coming from the Dead Sea, pales in size compared to Israel’s Mediterranean ports in Haifa and Ashdod, which handle nearly all the country’s trade.

But Eilat, which sits adjacent to Jordan’s only coastal access point at Aqaba, offers Israel a gateway to the East without the need to navigate the Suez Canal.

In December, Eilat Port’s chief executive told Reuters that an 85% drop in activity had been seen since Iran-backed Houthis began their attacks on ships in the Red Sea.