With the Gaza “ceasefire” agreement slated to begin on Sunday, the leadership of the Houthis in Yemen are signalling that they will stop their own attacks against Israel if the deal holds. For over a year, the Houthis have been launching ballistic missiles and conducting drone attacks against Israel, at times successfully evading the country’s much-vaunted Iron Dome missile defense system. The Houthis have also conducted a campaign of sustained attacks in the Red Sea, targeting what they said are Israeli-linked merchant shipping vessels. The attacks have disrupted regional trade and damaged Israel economically.
In an address delivered on Thursday, the leader of the Houthi movement, Abdulmalik al-Houthi, hailed the efforts of Palestinian resistance groups in Gaza fighting against Israeli aggression in the besieged territory. He said Yemen would continue to “monitor” developments in Palestine on the implementation of the agreement. But, al-Houthi added, the Houthis were prepared to continue their campaign against Israeli targets and regional shipping routes should the situation devolve back towards violence.
“If the Israeli enemy continues its genocidal massacres and escalation, we will persist in our offensive and military operations in support of the Palestinian people,” al-Houthi said in his address. “At any stage where the Israeli enemy returns to aggression and escalation, we will be prepared to provide support.”
General Yahya Saree, the spokesperson for the Houthi government’s army in Yemen, echoed those sentiments. “The Yemeni Armed Forces confirm their readiness for any developments or American-Israeli escalation against our country and we will continue to monitor the developments of the situation in Gaza and take appropriate escalation options in the event that the enemy breaks the agreement or escalates its operations against the oppressed Palestinian people in Gaza,” he said in a public address.
“The objective of our military operations is moral and aims to stop the genocide and end the siege,” Muhammad al-Bukhaiti, governor of Dhamar province and a Politburo member of Ansar Allah, the Houthi political arm, told Drop Site in a phone interview. “We hope for a comprehensive and permanent truce in Gaza and the lifting of the siege on its residents as soon as possible. Our military operations in support of Gaza serve as a leverage for Hamas, and when an agreement is reached, they will ask us to halt the military operations.”
Al-Bukhaiti added, “We support a truce, which is a shared demand between us and Hamas. In the past, they requested us to stop military operations when a ceasefire was reached, and we complied with that.”
As Israel has intensified its attacks in Gaza since the announcement of the ceasefire deal, killing more than 100 Palestinians in just the past two days, the Houthis have continued their own strikes against Israel. On Saturday, Gen. Saree announced that Sana’a launched a ballistic missile at Tel Aviv, targeting the Israel defense ministry. The Israeli air force said it intercepted the missile. Israeli media later reported that a fire erupted in Be’er Ya’akov in south Tel Aviv as a result of the interception’s falling debris. It also reported that air traffic at Ben Gurion Airport was halted. At 5pm, the Israeli air force announced another interception of a missile launch from Yemen.
The direct involvement of the Houthis in the war in Gaza shocked many observers during the early days of the onslaught. The conflict in Gaza suddenly transformed the Houthis, who had been mired in a years-long civil war inside Yemen and targeted by a long-running U.S.-backed military campaign led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, into a formidable regional player capable of striking Israel and damaging the economic interests of powerful nations backing its war against the Palestinians of Gaza.
In December, the Houthis attacked Israel, striking an area within Tel Aviv and reportedly injuring over a dozen people with what they claimed was a hypersonic missile. In addition to attacks on merchant vessels in the Red Sea that have effectively choked off a major global shipping route as well as the key Israeli port of Eilat, the Houthis have also demonstrated upgraded military drone capacities. A drone attack last summer struck an apartment building near the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv, killing one person and injuring ten.
These successful attacks have triggered numerous rounds of Israeli retaliation, including deadly strikes on oil and gas and port facilities inside Yemen. Israel, a nuclear power backed by the U.S. and possessing a far superior military arsenal, has, to date, failed to deter the Houthis.
In his comments, Abdulmalik al-Houthi cited what he said were improved tactics and munitions deployed by his group over the course of the war. In a rare acknowledgment, al-Houthi said that U.S. Navy vessels, as well as the armed forces of some Arab states, had successfully shot down a “large percentage” of the missiles and drones launched from Yemen towards Israel during the early days of war. Yet after improving their military capabilities and operational tactics, he said, hostile forces, including the U.S. military, had now been “largely neutralized from carrying out interceptions.”
“We will also continuously strive to develop our military capabilities, God willing, to achieve stronger, greater, and more effective performance in supporting the Palestinian people,” he added. “For us, this is an ongoing path, and we will persist on it.”
In addition to Israeli strikes targeting civilian infrastructure inside Yemen, U.S. and British aircraft have carried out their own military campaign seeking to hit targets associated with the Houthis. These strikes appear to have had little success in degrading the group’s capacities or deterring its will for confrontation.
During the course of the Gaza war, the Houthis, who are believed to receive some material and political support from Iran, have upgraded their military capabilities by deploying more advanced drones and missiles capable of bypassing Israeli defenses and striking its territory directly. The Houthis have also carried out targeted strikes against U.S. warships near Yemen, periodically firing ballistic missiles and anti-ship missiles.
In December, two U.S. Navy pilots were shot down near Yemen in an incident the U.S. military attributed to “friendly fire” from one of its own ships. The Houthis later claimed that the F/A-18 fighter jet was downed while the U.S. attempted to counter a coordinated missile and drone attack Houthi forces had launched against U.S. military assets, including the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman.
Although the Houthi movement has been divisive inside Yemen, its active stance in support of Palestinians in Gaza has rallied the support of many Yemenis. Weekly pro-Palestinian demonstrations organized by the group in areas under its control have drawn, by some estimates, millions of demonstrators.
On Friday, amid reports of the looming ceasefire, Yemenis again took to the streets in huge numbers for solidarity protests. A military spokesperson for the Houthis told those assembled that the group had carried out four new military operations against targets in the Israeli cities of Jaffa, Ashkelon, and the port of Eilat, as well as another drone attack against the USS Harry S. Truman.
Israel has vowed to escalate its own attacks against the Houthis, including by carrying out targeted killings against leaders of the militant movement. The Houthis remain a key part of the Iranian-backed “Axis of Resistance” in the region, which includes other armed groups like Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in the Gaza Strip, and a network of militias in Iraq. While Israeli attacks have inflicted severe damage on Hezbollah and Hamas and wrought major damage on vital energy and port infrastructure inside Yemen, the Houthis have thus far emerged largely unscathed.
On Friday, the U.S. Treasury Department announced new sanctions targeting the Yemen Kuwait Bank for Trade and Investment, a major financial institution in the country, alleging that the bank helped facilitate economic operations for the group, including “channeling the illicit proceeds of Iranian petroleum sales to the Houthis.”
Despite these measures, Houthi leaders say they are committed to maintaining—and even escalating—their campaign against Israel should the Gaza ceasefire fail to hold.
“We will watch the implementation of the agreement, and if there are any Israeli breaches, massacres or attacks, we will be ready to provide military support to the Palestinian people,” said al-Houthi.
Source: DropSite News
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