A spokesman for Yemen’s Houthis reaffirmed to Reuters that the group’s attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden would only be reassessed if Israel’s brutal campaign in Gaza comes to an end.
“There will be no halt to any operations that help Palestinian people except when the Israeli aggression on Gaza and the siege stops,” said Houthi spokesman Mohammed Abdulsalam.
A ceasefire in Gaza would bring regional calm as Hezbollah has also said it would stop launching rocket attacks against targets in northern Israel if Hamas and Israel agreed to a truce. However, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has threatened a ceasefire in Gaza would mean an escalation in southern Lebanon.
During the seven-day Gaza ceasefire in November that facilitated the exchange of hostages and prisoners, there was calm along the Lebanon-Israel border, and Houthi attacks on shipping largely subsided. US officials recently told CNN that they believe a new ceasefire would likely bring an end to the Houthi operations.
The Houthis, officially known as Ansar Allah, have been clear since they started targeting Israel-linked commercial shipping that the only way they would stop is if Israel stopped slaughtering Palestinians in Gaza and allowed humanitarian aid to flow unimpeded.
Instead of pressuring Israel to agree to a ceasefire, the US and the UK launched a new bombing campaign against the Houthis in January, which only escalated the situation. The Houthis responded by targeting American and British commercial shipping and have successfully hit several vessels.
The US and the UK have launched four major rounds of airstrikes, and the US has been launching unilateral strikes on a near-daily basis. President Biden launched the new war without authorization from Congress.
Senators grilled Biden administration officials on Tuesday over the lack of authorization and said the president has no authority to claim “self-defense” under Article II of the Constitution since the campaign was launched in defense of foreign ships.
“Article II self-defense means you can defend US personnel, you can defend US military assets, you probably can defend US commercial ships, but the defense of other nations’ commercial ships in no way, and it’s not even close, that’s not self-defense,” said Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA).
The US backed a Saudi/UAE-led coalition against the Houthis in a brutal war that killed 377,000 people between 2015 and 2022. During that time, the Houthis only became a more formidable fighting force and developed missile and drone technology that gave them the ability to hit Saudi oil infrastructure. A ceasefire between the Saudis and Houthis has held relatively well since April 2022, but new US sanctions are now blocking the implementation of a peace deal.
The Houthis will stop when and if Iran quits giving them missiles and drones.
The Israeli’s should stop their genocide of the Palestinian people regardless of what the Houthi do or don’t. Nevertheless the Israeli should be thankful to the Houthi for providing them with a comparably miniscule additional reason to do so.
The war in Gaza stops when Hamas releases the kidnapped victims.
Highly unlikely. Do you think the general war in Palestine that’s been going on for most of a century would magically stop if the Israeli regime released all the hostages it holds, with no further conditions?
No it doesn’t, not only because Israel doesn’t give a shit about the hostages. They just shoot them dead when they walk toward them. They shot them dead and burned them to a crisp with Apaches and tanks on the day itself. The hostages for the Israeli regime are just there, as you began to point out the importance of, for PR purposes. Maybe for their respective families they do matter, but not for the Israeli regime or their fanbase abroad. They use them, like you, for meaningless rethorics in their genocide-apologia.
There is not a war in Gaza, there is a genocide in Gaza of a modern military, supplied and protected by the most powerful empire on earth against unarmed Palestinians, driven out of their homes, denied all the necessities to sustain life, for latest example just shot dead just for the fun of it by sadist Israeli soldiers for showing up in utter despair for a handout at food queues. This is a nazi-style Endlosung for the problem the Jewish state has with the indiginous population of their racist colonial project with carefully planned deliberation.
The objective is the eradication of the Palestinian population, the Israeli hostages are for that purpose just instruments to play. One could perhaps hope those hostages still alive are spared the cruelty realizing their actual worth. Those released have come to know it a bit as some are threatend with rape and death and sprayed with sewage water the moment they dare to speak up. As any ‘self-hating Jew’ could have told them right away.
If the release of hostages at all were of any concern to the Israeli regime, they would have negotiated not only a cease fire, but the establishment of a sovereign Palestian State and the end of Apartheid in Israel proper as a first step toward fitting in the supposedly existing rules based world order.
The would have chosen not to eradicate the Palestinian people, but the occupation and oppression of the Palestinian people to whom the land belongs.
Well, West may not reassess bombing the crap out of you.
Way to go Houthis!!
No… It would not end, rather halted as long as the ceasefire lasts…!
And given the history of Hamas, the cease fire will not last long. They will again fire rockets at Israel as soon as they can.
Wow…! Tim Kaine just woke up to do his homework…!
Well that went out the window when they fired on US warships.
Not entirely true. And I won’t event get into details.
Former POTUS legal assistant John Hu advised that the Constitution is just a quaint 18th century schema. He was simply and clearly stating the thinking on it and law in general for the Straussian Neonazis; and, in the last 40 years a reality luminously & voluminously objectivized. Sen. Tim Kaine, in the well established SOP of all our polscum, is cynically posturing for the suckers.