Alwaght- With the intensification of the Israeli regime’s crimes in Gaza and the attempts for a ground offensive into the besieged enclave, it seems that the war domain is no longer limited to the occupied Palestinian territories and has taken a regional aspect. After Lebanese Hezbollah’s attacks on the Israeli positions and strikes by the Iraqi resistance groups on the American bases in Iraqi and Syria, a third front has been opened against the Israeli occupation.
Yemen’s Ansarullah Movement that has always been supportive of the Palestinian nation and already announced its readiness to join the fight of liberation of Palestine officially joined the war against the Israeli regime. The Yemeni armed forces released a statement on Tuesday, announcing firing missiles and drones at Israeli targets in response to Tel Aviv’s atrocities against the Palestinians.
“We launched a large number of ballistic and cruise missiles and drones at various targets of the Zionist enemy in the occupied Palestinian territories,” said Yahya Saree, the spokesman to Yemeni armed forces.
The statement said that the attack was the third in support of “our oppressed Palestinian brothers” and “we will continue with more precise strikes with missiles and drones.”
He added: “The position of the Yemeni people towards the Palestinian cause is stable and principal, and the Palestinian people have the right to defend themselves and use their full rights. Israel’s invasion of Gaza is done with the support of America and the complicity of some regimes. Our forces performed their duty in supporting Gaza and fired ballistic and cruise missiles at enemy targets in the occupied territories.”
This missile attack comes as Pentagon had earlier announced that several missiles fired at the occupied territories were intercepted in the Red Sea, emphasizing that they were preferably fired from Yemen.
In recent weeks, the leaders of Ansarullah have repeatedly warned against Israeli adventures, warning that if Tel Aviv continues with its crimes, they will also defend the Palestinians as their religious duty assigns. Abdul Malik Badreddin al-Houthi, the leader of Ansarullah, said in his recent speech that Yemen is ready to mobilize hundreds of thousands of people to fight alongside the Palestinians and warned of the consequences of the genocide in Gaza.
Mohammad Ali al-Houthi, a senior member of Yemen’s Supreme Political Council, announced last week that Sana’a is closely monitoring the current situation and developments in occupied Palestine and Gaza and will not sit idle in the genocidal war against the Palestinians in Gaza. Mohammad al-Bakhiti, a member of Ansarullah’s political office, on Wednesday highlighted Sana’a’s readiness to expand the scope of this confrontation and said that they have “many options” against the Israeli regime and the US as its main backer.
Like other resistance leaders, Sana’a officials have the conviction that the Israeli brutality in the occupied territories needs to be checked and walking back against it will only make the occupiers more arrogant. Ansarullah are actually standing ready for orders from the resistance command center to join in if a decision for a full-scale war is made.
Since the Yemenis find Israel an accomplice to the Saudi-led Arab coalition in their country, they are angry with Tel Aviv more than other nations and are seeking an opportunity to respond to the Israeli warmongering in their country. Official entry of Sana’a to Gaza war will confuse the Israelis who are concentrated on ground offensive they have not fully started yet. This is beside the Israeli concern about entry of Hezbollah and Iraqi resistance factions to the war, which will put the Israelis in a tight spot.
Palestine’s place in Ansarullah’s religious thought and political ideology
According to its religious thought, Ansarullah prioritizes such principles as fight against global arrogance represented by the US, support for the oppressed, and prevention of vice, and this is based on these principles that it supports the anti-Israeli occupation struggle of the Palestinians. In the mid-1990s, Faithful Youth Organization, led by Ansarullah leader al-Houthi, was founded in Yemen, and support for Palestine became one of the main orientations of this newly-founded organization.
Currently, Ansarullah with its special ideological views is part of the resistance discourse. This movement has significant closeness to the Axis of Resistance and its political and ideological frameworks. Religiously, Ansarullah is close to the Shiite Islam because of its Zaydi faith. But the more important point is the religious and ideological influence it took from the Islamic Revolution of Iran that toppled pro-Western monarchy and installed the largely pro-independence Islamic Republic in 1979. The slogans of Ansarullah— God is great, death to America, death to Israel, victory for Islam— indicate the serious bonds of this movement to goals of the Islamic resistance discourse and slogans. In practice, this movement shows behavior that falls within the framework of Iran-led Axis of Resistance’s regional agenda.
Many compare Ansarullah’s bonds to Axis of Resistance to emergence of a new Hezbollah in the regional developments. In the past decades, Lebanon’s Hezbollah was the most important Islamic movement arising from thought of the Islamic Revolution of Iran, which led to strategic changes in regional equations and Arab conflicts with the Israeli regime. The Ansarullah movement is considered as the newest type of these movements, which has important capacities to strengthen the goal of ending the occupation of Palestine and the complete destruction of the Israeli regime.
Just contrary to comprising Arab rulers who in recent years joined normalization project with Israel and turned their back to liberation of Palestine and a blind eye to the Israeli crimes in Gaza and the West Bank, Ansarullah have not ignored the Palestinians and backed the struggle of their brothers in the occupied territories.
Despite the long distance, it is clear that the bonds between Palestine and Yemen are unbreakable, to an extent that they have blurred the geographical lines. Therefore, currently Yemen can be named as one of the most powerful parties in the Axis of Resistance. This can be seen in Sana’a support to the resistance, especially to Palestine.
While grappling with their deep crises, the Yemenis did not forget the Palestinian cause and held massive rallies in recent years to make it clear that liberation of Palestine is of high importance to them.
In May 2021, Ansarullah leader in World Quds Day rally in Sana’a said that “people of Yemen will never forget the cause of Al-Quds and the issue of the liberation of Al-Quds. Our people consider the Israeli enemy a danger to the entire ummah and regional and global security and stability. Israel is an usurping entity that has no legitimacy and is a cancerous tumor that must be removed. He pointed to the conflict between Palestinian youths and the Israelis around the Al-Aqsa Mosque and praised their action and addressed the Israeli authorities saying: “You are now in a dire strait and those who trust God and walk honestly in the way of God will confront you.”
In April, the head of Yemen’s Supreme Political Council Mahdi Al-Mashat condemned the Israeli attacks on Al-Aqsa Mosque and the people praying inside the holy site and said that “Yemen’s support to the Palestinian nation and standing by the free people of the ummah is an unchangeable principal, humanitarian, political, and religious stance. Despite the current conditions of Yemen, we are eager to play an effective and practical role for liberation of Palestine.”
“In Yemen, we support Palestine with all our might, and in the last 10 years, we have faced Saudi, Israeli and American aggression, and we are facing massacres. Despite all these developments, we support Palestine and, God willing, victory is ours,” Abu Al-Fatth Al-Junaid, a senior member of Ansarullah, said in a speech last year.
With such supportive stances Sana’a leaders are taking for Palestine, it can be said that the Yemenis continue their support for the Palestinian brothers without fear from the Americans and Israelis, and should the tensions slip out of control, they can shoulder part of the duties in the Resistance camp and deal serious blows to the Israeli occupation.
Ansarullah’s capabilities and experience of 9 years of war
Ansarullah’s threats of confrontation of the Israeli brutality are driven by the military capabilities in missile, drone, and recently, naval areas it has built over the past 9 years while being under tight economic blockade.
From ballistic missiles to drones, Ansarullah has beefed up its combat capabilities since Arab coalition waged war on it in 2014. Ansarullah has repeatedly used ballistic missiles to target positions deep in Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and they can also use missile power to attack the Israeli regime.
Tofiq al-Humairi, a member of Ansarullah’s Revolutionary Committee, in 2018 told Sputnik about Sana’a’s missile capability that most of the missiles fired at Saudi Arabia targeted common American-Saudi regions, including Aramco oil giant.
“When our leader speaks about strikes beyond Saudi Arabia, he means Israel. We have improved our missiles and the Israelis should be ensured that our missiles reach them,” he continued.
In the past two years, Ansarullah has flexed its muscles to the enemies by holding large military exercises and unveiling its new weapons, and they do not mind testing the destructive power of these weapons in the occupied territories.
With a range of 2,000 kilometers, Yemeni missiles can now easily target the occupied territories, and this has caused Israeli worry. With their involvement in 9 years of war, Ansarullah are more ready than others to engage in regional conflicts as they gained extensive experience on the ground. Already being in difficult conditions, Yemenis are not afraid of possible clash with Israeli regime and the US, and senior Sana’a officials have several times asserted that they are ready for any scenario.
Last year, in the midst of tensions between Hezbollah and Israel over Karish gas field in the Mediterranean, Haaretz newspaper reported that although the possibility of entering into a conflict with Hezbollah is terrible, the more terrible threat is the growing military power of Ansarullah, which in the future can cause a lot of damage to Tel Aviv.
Sana’a’s strategic position to control Bab-el-Mandeb
In addition to military capabilities, Yemen’s strategic position allows Ansarullah to deal huge blows to the Israeli regime and the US. Sana’a’s control over strategic Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, which is one of the key maritime trade routes, grants Sana’a a vantage point allowing it to strike Israeli commercial ships sailing to East Asia.
According to data, 50 percent of the Israeli trade with the outside world takes place through the Red Sea and through Bab-el-Mandeb, and in other words, this sea route is considered a vital artery for the economy of this regime, and if this route is disrupted, it will affect its economy. It was for this reason that the US deployed 3,500 military forces in the Red Sea in recent months to defend the security of international navigation against the alleged threats posed by Iran and Ansarullah.
Therefore, with Israeli Red Sea trade revenue cut-off and the lack of an alternative route, it will be difficult for Tel Aviv to continue fighting the Palestinian groups without economic support if the war on Gaza is prolonged. Just two weeks after the start of airstrikes on Gaza, Tel Aviv requested $10 billion in aid from the US, showing that it will face serious challenges in the future if the conflict continues. Therefore, Washington is providing $14 billion in funds to help the Israelis steer clear of crisis in their war with resistance groups.
Ansarullah’s missile and drone attacks on the occupied territories showed that hit-and-run period has gone, and with the rising deterrence of the Axis of Resistance, nowhere in the region is safe for the Israelis, and if Gaza crimes continue, Tel Aviv will suffer heavy blows from the Resistance camp’s various branches.
