Oman Quietly Stopped Accepting Israel-Bound Cargo at Its Ports. Israel's Two Biggest Tahini Makers Are Already Warning of a Shortage — We Checked What the Same Barcode Costs Today, Chain by Chain

By מערכת סופרקליר · 2026-08-21 · 4 min read

67% — The gap between the cheapest and priciest listing for the identical El Arz sesame tahini, 500g, same barcode — ₪14.30 at Shufersal vs. ₪23.90 at City Market and Super Sapir — across 1,219 price points in 28 chains, per Superclear data from August 21, 2026, as Israel's two biggest tahini makers warn of a looming shortage

In early August 2026, N12's Yuval Sade reported a detail that barely registered outside consumer-affairs circles: Oman, once counted among the leading candidates to join the next wave of Abraham Accords normalization, has in recent months quietly stopped accepting Israel-bound containers at its ports. The backdrop, per the report, is the ongoing war with Iran. The practical result: the only sea route left for importing Ethiopian sesame into Israel is now blocked, and Israel's two biggest tahini producers are already warning in public that a shelf shortage could follow (N12/Mako).

The sesame route that got cut off

Israel has no direct shipping lines to Ethiopia, the main source of the sesame and coffee beans the local food industry relies on. Since Ethiopia itself has no port, its exports travel overland to the port of Djibouti and from there to an intermediary hub. Until recently, that hub was Oman's Salalah port. Per N12, Oman has in recent months imposed an informal veto on accepting cargo bound for Israel through that port. Dubai's ports, once the fallback option, are no longer accessible after the latest round with Iran — and Iran's blockade of the Strait of Hormuz effectively closes that route too. In practice, Israel currently has no reliable sea route at all for Ethiopian sesame, and local food companies are scrambling for a stopgap through ports in Egypt and Cyprus (Ice; Caliber.Az).

Israel's two biggest tahini makers are already on alert

Per the report, two of Israel's largest tahini producers are already feeling the squeeze: Achva, the country's biggest tahini maker, and Sugat, which makes the El Arz brand. Achva says it has no plans to raise prices at this stage, but is warning of a possible shortage that could end up being felt on store shelves. Israel's Foreign Ministry is involved in trying to resolve the standoff with Oman, but diplomatic efforts haven't produced a solution yet. It's worth being precise about what this actually is: as of this writing, it's a shortage warning, not a confirmed price hike — and there is no official confirmation from Oman itself of the policy N12 describes. The entire story currently rests on a single Israeli source, Channel 12/N12, since picked up by other outlets in Israel and abroad.

The backdrop: a regional war that's already reached the ports

This isn't happening in a vacuum. Oman — a country Israeli officials visited on the cusp of a possible peace deal only a few years ago — has itself been hit by the regional war: in March 2026, Iranian drones struck Salalah port directly, hitting fuel tanks in its southern section and forcing a temporary suspension of port operations (Times of Israel). There's no confirmation of a direct link between that strike, which happened roughly five months before the current reporting on the cargo veto, and the decision to stop accepting Israel-bound goods — but both developments point to the same larger picture: a war disrupting basic regional trade routes, including the ones that stock Israeli shelves.

What Superclear's data already shows

So what do you do with a shortage warning that's still just a warning? Check what's already happening on the shelf, before anything else happens. We checked Superclear's own data for El Arz sesame tahini (500g, barcode 7290001216040) — a Sugat brand, one of the two companies sounding the alarm. The product currently shows up at 1,219 price points across 28 different chains. The cheapest listing, ₪14.30, is at Shufersal — a chain that sits at Superclear's own "average" label overall, just 1% above the national median. The priciest, ₪23.90, is at City Market and Super Sapir. The gap: 67%, on the exact same barcode, before any shortage risk has translated into a single extra shekel on a receipt.

The pattern repeats on similar products. El Arz's whole-sesame tahini (500g) ranges from ₪15.20 to ₪23.90 — a 57% gap — and Har Bracha's "100% pure sesame" tahini, a competitor not named in the shortage warning, ranges from ₪16.90 to ₪27.90 — a 65% gap. Achva's own tahini, meanwhile, currently shows up in Superclear's data at just two City Market stores (₪15.90) — too thin a sample to build a chain comparison on, but enough to show the brand already prices above El Arz where the two overlap.

The bottom line

Nothing has actually changed on your receipt yet: Achva says it has no plans to raise prices, and the real story here is a risk to availability, not a confirmed move on price. But the data shows that even with no shortage, no Oman, and no war, the gap between the cheapest and priciest listing for the identical jar of tahini already runs past 60% — comfortably wider than any price increase a shortage would plausibly produce in the near term. If a real shortage does hit shelves in the coming weeks, it's worth watching not just the price tag, but which chain keeps selling at today's cheap end — because the gap between chains is already bigger than anything this diplomatic standoff is likely to produce on its own.

Sources