Israel has intensified its aerial assaults on Yemen, emboldened by a 14-month regional war and bolstered by the United States.
On Thursday, Israeli fighter jets unleashed a string of raids on both the capital and the port city of Hodeidah.
The attacks centred on Sana’a International Airport, which suffered multiple strikes merely one day after Houthi forces launched drones towards Tel Aviv and Ashkelon.
In the aftermath, the airport’s air traffic control tower lay in ruins, the runway was severely damaged, and the arrival lounge – where numerous travellers had been preparing to depart for Amman – was left shattered.
Moments before the bombing, the Director-General of the World Health Organisation, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, and the United Nations Resident Coordinator in Yemen, Julien Harneis, were at the airport seeking to leave the country.
‘We were just metres away when the airstrikes began,’ Ghebreyesus wrote in a public post. ‘One of our plane’s crew members was injured. At least two people were reported killed at the airport. The air traffic control tower, the departure lounge – just a few metres from where we were – and the runway were damaged.’
Additional attacks unfolded south of the capital, as well as in Hodeidah, where critical power stations came under fire.
According to the Sana’a government, six individuals lost their lives and 40 more were wounded as a direct result of these raids.
Addressing the nation in a combative tone, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared: ‘We are determined to cut off this terrorist arm of Iran’s axis of evil. We will persist until we get the job done.’
The sense of urgency and threat was further amplified by Israel’s defence minister, who vowed to eliminate leaders of the Houthi movement, explicitly singling out their chief figure, Abdulmalik al-Houthi.
These threats to assassinate were issued only a few days after Israel admitted responsibility for killing Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran last summer.
Thursday’s strikes constitute the fourth time Israel has aggressively targeted Yemen since it began its siege on Gaza, this time citing the need to retaliate for two Houthi drone operations that hit Tel Aviv and Ashkelon.
Footage posted on social media showed a blaze erupting in an industrial section of Ashkelon, which a local reporter attributed to Houthi targeting.
The intensification of conflict between Israel and the Houthis has escalated to a dangerous junction, particularly as the Houthis have long opposed Israel’s blockade and bombardment of Gaza.
In fact, over the past year, Houthi forces have intermittently directed attacks at Eilat in retaliation for Israel’s war on Gaza.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres expressed ‘grave concern’ over the escalating crisis.
In a statement, his spokesperson said, ‘The Secretary-General remains deeply concerned about the risk of further escalation in the region and continues to urge all to exercise utmost restraint.’
Netanyahu framed the Israeli bombing in Yemen as a global responsibility, claiming that Israel was acting ‘on behalf of the international community’ by striking ‘terrorists threatening shipping lanes and commerce’.
In his words: ‘After Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Assad regime in Syria, the Houthis are nearly the last remaining arm of Iran’s axis of evil. They are learning—and will continue to learn—the hard way that whoever harms Israel pays a very heavy price.’
Despite being outmatched militarily, the Houthis have shown no intention of backing down.
‘The government and its military and security forces continue to work tirelessly to defend the rights, dignity and security of the Yemeni people,’ said Hashem Sharaf Addin, the Sana’a government’s spokesperson and Information Minister. ‘We also confirm that our support for the oppressed Palestinian people will continue until the aggression on Gaza stops and the siege on its people is lifted.’
This defiance has roots in a brutal war that has ravaged Yemen for nearly a decade.
A Saudi-led coalition, supported by the United States, has inflicted severe damage on the country’s infrastructure and compounded what the United Nations has repeatedly described as the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.
A UN-brokered agreement had, until recently, given Yemen some respite, enabling vital fuel imports and allowing Sana’a airport to reopen, so long as Houthi missile strikes into Saudi Arabia ceased. Now, that fragile understanding is in jeopardy.
On 19th December, Israeli aircraft bombed the Ras Isa oil terminal, Al-Salif, and vital facilities in Hodeidah, Yemen’s most significant port, where tugboats essential to docking cargo vessels were destroyed or damaged.
Simultaneously, the capital city saw two important electricity stations in flames, depriving vast residential areas of power.
Although there were no reported civilian fatalities in that particular operation, the region’s population was left without electricity until local crews managed to restore it later in the day.
Israeli officials insisted they had only targeted sites exploited by ‘Houthi forces for military ends’, including those allegedly facilitating weapons smuggling from Iran.
Yet people on the ground countered this narrative. In Hodeidah, resident Muhammad Alwi condemned the destruction of tugboats: ‘This attack harms no one but the people and their livelihoods.’
Meanwhile, in southern Sana’a, 41-year-old Mosa Al-Juraf described the strikes on electricity plants as ‘barbaric’, emphasising that the entire local population relies on those services.
These Israeli attacks, financed and approved by Washington, add another layer of devastation to a region already plagued by the catastrophic after-effects of protracted war.
‘It’s tragic that US-backed Israeli attacks are now escalating against civilian infrastructure in yet another country in the region,’ said Erik Sperling, the executive director of a non-governmental organisation that examines US foreign policy.
‘Yemen was already facing a dire humanitarian crisis, and now Israel appears intent on collectively punishing civilians to pressure the authorities in Sana’a.’
Such actions have prompted discussions of possible war crimes, given the deliberate targeting of critical infrastructure and the well-documented suffering of the civilian population.
The broader context, of course, involves Israel’s ongoing genocidal war on Gaza.
The Houthis have voiced unyielding solidarity with Palestine, going so far as to target vessels that they accuse of Israeli ownership or affiliation as they navigate Yemen’s Red Sea, the Bab al-Mandab Strait, the Gulf of Aden, and the Arabian Sea.
Their long-range missiles and drones have also repeatedly struck Israeli sites, with Houthi officials declaring that they will continue doing so for as long as Israel’s campaign against Gaza continues.
In reaction, the United States has assembled a military coalition designed to protect commercial ships travelling through Yemeni waterways and to degrade Houthi combat capabilities perceived to threaten trade routes and allied nations in the region.
Nonetheless, Houthi strikes have only grown more sophisticated, often evading Israeli air defences.
Two days after Israel’s most recent strikes on Yemen, the United States reported bombing a ‘missile storage facility and a command-and-control centre’ in Sana’a that Washington alleges is operated by the ‘Iran-backed Houthi movement.’
Faj Attan, a mountain near the capital known for its warehouses of weaponry, was once again levelled – an area already bombarded countless times by the Saudi-led coalition over the years.
On 22 December, the Houthis announced that they had targeted American naval assets in the Red Sea with drones and missiles.
US Central Command responded by confirming they had intercepted several drones and at least one anti-ship cruise missile, although they acknowledged that a friendly fire incident resulted in the downing of one of their own fighter jets.
That very day, the Houthis launched another missile at Israel’s capital, evidently evading air defences and striking open land. Israel’s Air Defence (IAD) disclosed it was investigating the incident and refining interception protocols.
‘We emphasise that air defence is not hermetic and that Home Front Command instructions must continue to be followed,’ IAD warned.
For Washington and Tel Aviv, the predicament deepens.
Some analysts argue that the only effective method to deter the Houthis would be to cease the war on Gaza.
‘Even Biden’s Yemen Envoy Lenderking – the most influential anti-Houthi activist in the world – admitted that winding down the Gaza war would likely end Houthi attacks on Israel and shipping routes in the Red Sea,’ commented Sperling, who previously served as a congressional staffer focusing on Yemeni affairs.
He believes that the alternative – an escalation intended to quell the Houthis by force – risks drawing more violence into an already explosive region.
US officials have reportedly been meeting with Yemeni factions opposed to the Houthis to explore how best to counter the group, emboldened by Israel’s extrajudicial killings of prominent figures in Hamas and Hezbollah.
This, in turn, threatens to undermine any chance of lasting peace in Yemen, jeopardising the tenuous UN-brokered ceasefire that had halted missile exchanges with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
The Houthis themselves appear undaunted by Israeli or American threats.
On 23rd December, two more drone strikes were aimed at Israel, but the Israeli Defence Forces claimed to have intercepted them in mid-flight.
In response, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz issued yet another warning, pledging to reduce Hodeidah and Sana’a to devastation comparable to Gaza, Lebanon, or Tehran if the Houthis persisted.
‘We will target Houthi infrastructure and eliminate their leaders, as we did with Haniyeh, Sinwar, and Nasrallah,’ Katz stated, referencing deadly attacks on Hamas and Lebanese leadership in past conflicts.
Just hours later, at midnight on 24th December, the Israeli Air Force reported intercepting a further missile coming from Yemeni territory. Footage circulating on social media seemed to suggest that the projectile might have approached its intended location.
For many observers, these rounds of back-and-forth assaults and intercepts are a distressing manifestation of how an already catastrophic situation is becoming even more precarious.
Sperling underscored the role of outside powers in facilitating potential atrocities: ‘The US-backed Israeli strikes on critical infrastructure like air and sea ports show how useful an extremist Israel is for US regional designs.
US officials have long sought to use these ports for leverage but largely stopped short of military attacks, fearing condemnation.
Now, they can supply Israel with the necessary arms and intelligence for these war crimes, effectively outsourcing the task and escaping full accountability, while also pressuring Gulf proxies to intensify their ground campaign against the Sana’a government.’
