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I'm guessing these "soft traders" were more similar to the Vikings, Portuguese circa 1600, or the East India Company. One of the main things they traded was weapons and armor.
The Bronze Age Middle East was dominated by organized states with professional armies (and large levies). Viking traders would have been crushed.
Bronze Age traders were legalistic extended families building kinship enterprises over large distances, like Medieval Italians.
Not necessarily. The main states seem not to have done much sailing of their own, possible a maritime trading empire could be relatively safe to raid and slip off into the Med. One wonders exactly how peaceful Tyre was, for instance.
Well, other than some trade with India I don't think we know much about and the tin trade, most trade in the Bronze Age was overland, riverine, or coastwise.
Piracy certainly existed (plenty of coastwise trade happened in areas distant from central authorities), but it wouldn't have been part of most trade that happened.
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Actually the Venetians would be a good corollary.
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