When a vessel named Panormitis slipped into Haifa Bay last week carrying wheat harvested from occupied Ukrainian farmland, it carried more than cargo. It carried a question Israel can no longer defer: what is the cost of pretending you can do business with everyone?

[https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/shipid:418736/mmsi:352003195/imo:9445021/vessel:PANORMITIS]

In finance, we call this counterparty risk — the danger that the other party to a transaction turns out to be unreliable, or worse, compromised. Israel’s grain imports from Russian-occupied Ukraine are a textbook case. The wheat may be cheap. The counterparty risk is enormous.

President Zelensky’s threat of sanctions this week was not diplomatic theatre. Ukraine summoned Ambassador Michael Brodsky, announced a sanctions package targeting companies and individuals involved in the trade, and — critically — said it would coordinate with European partners to extend those sanctions into EU regimes. The European Union obliged almost immediately, warning it stands ready to list third-country entities facilitating Russia’s war economy. A Haaretz investigation had already established that at least four other such shipments were unloaded in Israel this year alone — part of a pipeline stretching back to 2023 that has delivered over thirty cargoes in total. These are not rogue consignments slipping past an overburdened port........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)