ROUGHLY three and half thousand years ago, Moses held out his staff and God parted the Red Sea, allowing the Israelites to leg it out of Egypt.

By the time the pharaoh’s soldiers attempted the crossing, the Lord promptly closed the waters again, drowning the pursuing troops.

Well, that’s the account contained in the Jewish, Christian and Muslim scriptures anyway. Whatever one’s religious convictions or lack thereof, the story is a reminder that armed conflict, refugee crises and potential disruptions to shipping are nothing new in the Middle East.

All these millennia later, the Red Sea has become crucially important for our industry, largely in its capacity as the only available passage for vessels entering or leaving the Suez Canal.

Since the Houthis commenced attacks on merchant tonnage in November 2023, most shipowners have deemed it just too much of a risk.

Typically, they have rerouted round the Cape of Good Hope, although that adds 10-14 days to transit times and hundreds of thousands of dollars to opex.

But following the ostensible ceasefire in Gaza last month and the cessation of the Yemeni rebel faction’s campaign, the obvious question is whether now the right time for vessels to hazard a return.

Taking a cautious stance on this one has been NYK president Takaya Soga. His company operates one of the world’s largest diversified fleets, including dry bulkers, tankers, gas carriers and car carriers, and is a core shareholder in Ocean Network Express.

The current truce is at best fragile, he pointed out, with each side routinely accusing the other of violations.

So NYK will not be going back until Israel, Hamas and Iran reach a durable settlement, he confirmed in an interview with Lloyd’s List this week.

His position seems vindicated by marine insurers. Red Sea war risk premiums are not thought to have fallen significantly since the peace deal, which tells you all you need to know about how underwriters perceive the outlook.

But this perspective is not unanimous. There are tentative indications that other big names in the boxship sector — including Maersk, CMA CGM and Zim — are more favourably disposed.

Their inclination will be encouraged by the Suez Canal Authority, which has lost billions of dollars on account of the recent fighting, with an impact felt by the Egyptian economy as a whole.

Canal chiefs have naturally been doing all they can to encourage reluctant owners to venture back, to the extent of offering substantial discounts on the usual fees.

But the confident proclamation that Maersk will start using the canal again as soon as next month seems to have jumped the gun.

Big Blue itself has downplayed the prospect, committing instead simply to the perspective that it will “take steps to resume navigation … and over time normalise the transits on this route”.

Yet SCA chair Admiral Ossama Rabiee is surely right to highlight the reality that the canal is the shortest and fastest link between east and west, and thus the optimal route for any rational global supply chain.

It makes straight-up business sense for shipowners to use it, and the likelihood is that they will start to do so again just as soon as they deem it safe.

As early modern philosopher Baruch Spinoza famously observed, there is more to peace than the absence of war. But in the Middle East, absence of war is about as good as it gets, and that is what we have at the moment.

Soga’s demand for a durable settlement represents an unnecessarily high threshold. Commercial logic alone dictates that most of his opposite numbers will settle for a lower definition.

The Book of Exodus provides us with a warning of what can happen to those who foolishly insist on attempting Red Sea transits in the face of precipitous portent. Bad stuff can happen.

But barring the unlikely occurrence of divine intervention a second time around, the vessels will be back just as soon as uncertainty no longer prevails.