(CN) — With a war widening in the Middle East, the European Union is getting further drawn into the conflict as it prepares to send warships to the Red Sea and seeks to revive peace talks.
After a two-day meeting of EU foreign ministers that ended Tuesday, the bloc said it was moving ahead with plans to send its own military naval mission to the Red Sea next month to stop Yemen’s Houthi rebels from attacking commercial vessels passing through the Suez Canal.
The Houthi campaign to disrupt commerce through the Red Sea is dramatically raising the stakes in the Middle East conflict, causing major disruptions to Europe’s trade with Asia and putting a strain on energy supplies from the Persian Gulf.
The Houthis, a well-organized and entrenched rebel group that occupies much of Yemen, say they will cease their attacks on commercial vessels when Israel stops its attacks on Palestinians. The Houthis and Hamas in Israel are aligned with Iran.
On Jan. 11, American and British warships began pounding Houthi targets in Yemen. New U.S.-U.K. strikes were reported Tuesday. European allies opted to not join the Washington-led operation, fearing it would cause the Middle East conflict to escalate. Upping the stakes, Washington placed the Houthis back on its terrorist list last week.
The EU in its naval mission will not launch attacks on Yemeni soil nor engage in combat; rather, the governing body will limit its aims to protecting ships, Brussels has said. Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany are among the EU states prepared to send warships.
Regardless, many Western experts are skeptical the war-hardened Houthis can be deterred from their attacks because they are so well entrenched in Yemen. For nearly a decade, their forces have survived U.S.-backed bombing by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Experts warn Western bombing campaigns against the Houthis may even be strengthening their position inside Yemen and across the Middle East, where they are praised by many for standing up for Palestinians.
“I don’t this is a strategy in Yemen when it comes to bombing the forest and hoping a snake will be less of a problem,” said Farea Al-Muslimi, an expert at Chatham House, a London-based think tank, in a commentary. “They feel like they are the last defenders of Palestine.”
He doubted the bombing would stop the Houthis, whose military capacities have grown after a decade of war.
At the same Brussels meeting, EU diplomats also held talks with Israeli, Palestinian and Arab foreign ministers. The EU is seeking to host a peace conference over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — but prospects for a breakthrough are far from good after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected the idea of a Palestinian state in recent days.
The EU and the U.S. have long backed a two-state solution, but neither Brussels nor Washington have pushed Israel to accept a ceasefire and pull its troops back from Gaza. EU leaders remain split over the question of a ceasefire, though last week the European Parliament voted in favor of supporting a ceasefire.
With no end in sight to the Israeli-Palestinian war, commercial trade through the all-important Suez Canal could be disrupted for months, adding even more pressure to a struggling world economy.
This disruption is particularly troublesome for the EU’s economy because it relies so heavily on the Suez Canal. About 40% of trade between Asia and Europe passes through the canal.
Some businesses, such as a Tesla car factory outside Berlin, have temporarily suspended operations because of a lack of supplies from Asia. Tesla said it needed to wait for the arrival of car batteries from China, as reported by Deutsche Welle, a German broadcaster. Carmaker Volvo has also suspended some operations. The disruption is also putting a squeeze on crude oil supplies to Europe.
A prolonged disruption would likely lead to increased prices in Europe, which already has been struggling with high inflation amid numerous global crises.
About 17,000 ships pass through the Suez Canal each year carrying about $1 trillion worth of goods.
A growing number of ships on the Asia-Europe route are now avoiding the Red Sea and the Suez Canal and making the much longer route around the Cape of Good Hope in southern Africa.
This is a much longer journey — it can add up to two weeks of extra time on the sea — which raises shipping costs by as much as 50%, according to news reports.
Die Welt, a German newspaper, reported at the end of December that the Red Sea cutoff is causing economic losses of about 360 million euros ($390 million) per hour. The newspaper cited internal EU documents.
Courthouse News reporter Cain Burdeau is based in the European Union.