Retaliatory strikes between Israel and Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels could represent a “dangerous turning point,” experts say, as the war in the Gaza Strip continues to inflame regional tensions.
Israel struck the Yemeni port city of Al Hudaydah, a Houthi stronghold, on Saturday in what appeared to be the country’s first strikes on Yemeni soil since the start of the war in Gaza in October. Fighter jets “struck military targets” in the area, according to a statement from the Israel Defense Forces, “in response to the hundreds of attacks carried out against the State of Israel in recent months.”
On Friday, a Houthi drone penetrated Israel’s air defense system, hitting an apartment building in Tel Aviv, one block from a U.S. Embassy branch office, killing one and injuring at least 10.
Al-Masirah TV, a Houthi-controlled media outlet, said the strikes by Israel on Saturday targeted oil facilities and a power station, and had caused deaths, injuries and widespread power cuts.
The Houthis, who see their campaign against Israel and commercial shipping in the Red Sea as part of an allied defense of Palestinians in Gaza, vowed to exact revenge with Houthi spokesperson Mohammed Abdulsalam telling Al Jazeera that Israel “has opened an open-ended war.”
By Sunday, the group said it had retaliated with a strike on the Israeli port city of Eilat.
Israel said its air defenses intercepted a surface-to-surface missile launched from Yemen on Sunday, and Israel’s Army Radio reported that warning sirens had sounded in Eilat.
Syria issued statement saying Israel’s attack on Yemen “threatens to drag the entire Middle East region” into confrontation. In April, Israel struck an Iranian Embassy complex in the Syrian capital of Damascus, prompting a retaliatory barrage of drones from Iran into Israel’s airspace, in a calibrated warning shot that stopped short of escalating into a regional war.
Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militant group and political party in Lebanon, released a statement calling the attack “a new and dangerous phase of the extremely important ongoing confrontation.” Israel and Hezbollah have traded deadly fire over their border since the start of the war in Gaza.
The Houthis have also continued their campaign to attack ships in the key shipping lane of the Red Sea, striking the Liberia-flagged cargo vessel Pumba on Sunday.
Fawaz Gerges, a professor of international relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science, said it “takes a spark” to turn what is currently a low-intensity conflict among Israel, Lebanon, the Houthis and Iran into a “huge fire that consumes the region.”
“Israel’s war in Gaza threatens to escalate into all-out war,” he said. “As long the war in Gaza goes on, the greater the risk of a wider regional conflict, which again could drag the United States into the Middle East’s killing fields.”
“Hezbollah and the Houthis have repeatedly said that they will not stop attacking Israel unless the latter ends its war against the Palestinians in Gaza,” Gerges added.
Gershon Baskin, Middle East director of the International Communities Organisation based in Israel, says the the big question is, “What are Iran going to do?”
“In a logical scenario, the Houthis will realize they cross the line and that Israel has an enormous amount of firepower,” he said. “On the other hand, this could lead to an Iranian response which could bring about a whole regional conflict.”
“It’s all so dangerous,” Baskin said. “It’s unpredictable.”
Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani has condemned the Israeli attacks and “warned against the risk of escalation of tension and the spread of war in the region,” but the extent of the damage caused by Israel’s strike on Al Hudaydah also remains unknown, with fires still raging into Sunday from oil and electricity storage facilities.
The strike killed three and injured dozens, Houthi rebels have said, but damage to key infrastructure threatens a greater impact on civilians.
Anwar Ali, country director for the Danish Refugee Council in Yemen, said the latest escalation was “deeply concerning.”
“Alongside the immediate harm to civilians these Israeli airstrikes have caused, further escalation threatens both access for aid organizations and to disrupt supply chains, in a country which relies heavily on imports, in particular for food, medicine and fuel,” he said, adding that families had already been displaced as a result of the strikes.
“It is vital that the international community works to de-escalate tensions in Yemen,” he said. Nine years of civil war between Yemeni government forces and Houthi rebels have displaced millions and brought still more to the brink of famine.
On Friday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that a long-sought cease-fire between Israel and Hamas was within sight, and that negotiators were “driving toward the goal line.”
He told the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado that Hamas and Israel had agreed to the cease-fire framework outlined by U.S. President Joe Biden in May after a lot of pushing and diplomacy, but said that some issues needed to be resolved.
“I believe we’re inside the 10-yard line and driving toward the goal line in getting an agreement that would produce a cease-fire, get the hostages home and put us on a better track to trying to build lasting peace and stability,” he said.
Without a cease-fire in Gaza, however, the cycles of flaring tensions threatening to spill out into regional war are likely to continue.
“The only way to defuse this escalatory crisis is to reach an immediate cease-fire in Gaza that stops the bloodletting of Palestinians and the tragedy of Israeli hostages and Palestinians prisoners,” Gerges said.
