The Shipping and Ports Authority responds to the chairman of Ashdod Port who asked to forfeit the concession from the Gulf port operated by a Chinese company until the end of the war: “Your letter reflects a lack of expertise, and may harm foreign relations and the war effort.”
Earlier this week, Ashdod Port Chairman Shaul Schneider demanded that the Shipping and Ports Authority expropriate the concession from the Gulf port from the Chinese company SIPG until the end of the war. SIPG was selected in a state tender in 2015 to operate it for 25 years.
In response to Schneider’s demand, the director of the Shipping and Ports Authority in the Ministry of Transportation, Zadok Redker, responded in a letter sent today that Schneider’s letter “includes information that is not accurate to the point of being incorrect, written in a biased manner and is intended to mislead the public and may cause severe damage to Israel’s maritime trade and harm relations Israel’s foreign affairs and may even harm the war efforts. Your letter reflects a lack of expertise in the field and we take very seriously the very act of writing it, especially its distribution, including the way it was done.”
Redker also wrote that “Respan” (the Shipping and Ports Authority – AZ) conducts situation assessments, in which representatives of all the port corporations that provide port services in Israel participate. Among them, a participant on behalf of the Chinese company Yoav Zuckerman – an Israeli citizen who served in the IDF and formerly served in a government company”.
Redker added that “the assessments of the situation are not classified from a security point of view and do not deal with aspects of competition and commercial information of the companies. Respan places emphasis in these meetings on the functional readiness of the ports, taking care and emphasizing that no business information of any of the participating companies will be presented during them, as is routinely done “.
The source of the dispute: the decision of the Cuzco company not to send ships to Israel
Schneider’s demand is rooted in the decision of the Chinese company Cuzco, which is owned by the Chinese government, as well as the company that operates the Gulf port, not to send ships to Israel. However, according to Redker, “this reference does not correspond to reality and is there to mislead. We will clarify that the decision of the shipping company COSCO to stop all service to and from the State of Israel, in order to avoid a conflict with the Houthi forces operating in the Red Sea region, although it may slightly harm the flow of trade Al and Israel, is out of place, after all, this is a business decision, and as far as we know, it is not an official position of the Chinese government and cannot be projected from it on the company’s activities or other shipping companies.”
Redker ended his letter with a rebuke, “Your letter goes beyond the role of the Ashdod Port Company, which is in fact a company that competes with the company in providing port services, and raises suspicion about the purpose of sending the letter by you, lest it be sent for the purposes stated in it. Regarding these issues and at this time, it is appropriate to carefully check the data and coordinate your positions on this sensitive issue with the state authorities before publishing them publicly.”
This week, Schneider wrote that “there is no escape from stopping the summoning of the representative of the Chinese port to the discussions (situation assessment discussions in the RSP, AZ) as well as the denial of the certification letter of the Chinese port until the end of the war.” And he added: “China is one of the world powers that has not only turned its back on Israel, but is also openly working against it. In fact, it is imposing a boycott of goods on the State of Israel through a direct order to the shipping company Cusco and Ausial to stop visiting Israel’s ports.”
The Chinese government company that won the tender to operate the port of Haifa
The port is an Israeli port owned by the State of Israel. The SIPG company, the operator of the Shanghai port, went beyond the borders of China when it participated and won in 2015 a tender to operate it for 25 years. The port has various security restrictions and the national interests decree allows the state to expropriate the port from the company at any time.
SIPG is a Chinese government company, and there is even a corporate relationship between its parent company, which sits as mentioned in Shanghai, and the Cuzco shipping company, which stopped visiting Israel. However, the biggest loser from Israel’s failure to act is precisely the Gulf port that received those ships.
Since its operation, the Port of the Gulf has excelled in its operations and is able to bite more and more in the container industry from the ports in Israel – including the Port of Ashdod with which it competes for transportation in the field. A government official told Globes this week that “it seems that the Port of Ashdod is alarmed that containers have gone to the new ports (the South Port and the Gulf Port – AZ) when the market is in a bad state and the Ashdod Port is losing customers.”
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