Dov Lieber, Carrie Keller-Lynn and Saleh al-Batati
WSJ, Jan. 6, 2025
“Israel is Israelizing the problem.”
Over the past year, Israel’s military has proved adept at taking down threats to the country’s security. After the initial shock of the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, Hamas’s top leadership has been largely neutralized. Iran’s other big ally in the region, Hezbollah, was set back severely in Lebanon.
Now Israel is setting its sights on the Houthi rebel group in Yemen, who represent a lingering problem, regularly firing missiles at Israel—and it is a problem with few clear ways to handle.
So far, Israel has targeted what it says is energy and transportation infrastructure the Houthis use for military purposes. The next step is to hit the group’s top leaders, much as its security forces did with Hamas and Hezbollah.
“We will hunt down all of the Houthis’ leaders, and we will strike them just as we have done in other places,” said Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz in late December, following Israel’s fourth round of airstrikes against the Houthis since July.
The Houthis, however, present a unique security challenge for Israel because of how distant they are from Israel, a lack of intelligence on the group and the fact that retaliatory airstrikes seem to only inflate domestic support for the group while doing little to stem attacks. A U.S.-led coalition also has failed to clamp down on Houthi provocations against global maritime shipping. Yemen is already one of the world’s poorest countries, and nearly a decade of warfare with a Saudi Arabian-led coalition has done little to deter the group. …SOURCE