CrossFireArarbia

Houthis Launch Three-Pronged Attack on Israel

CrossFireArabia
July 17, 2025

Yemen’s Houthi group announced Wednesday it targeted Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport, Eilat port and a military site in the Negev region in a series of coordinated missile and drone attacks.

“The Houthi missile force launched a ballistic missile of the Zulfiqar type at Lod Airport (Ben Gurion) in the Tel Aviv area,” Houthi military spokesperson Yahya Saree said in a prerecorded statement.

He added that the strike forced “occupying Zionist settlers into shelters and halted airport operations.”

Saree said the group also conducted operations using drones. Two drones targeted an Israeli military site in the Negev region, while others were aimed at Ben Gurion Airport and the port of Eilat according to Anadolu.

Earlier, the Israeli army said it intercepted a missile fired from Yemen, triggering air raid sirens in several southern areas. The army did not mention any drone activity in its statement.

Air raid sirens sounded across multiple towns and settlements in the Negev and Dead Sea areas, according to Israel’s Yedioth Ahronoth daily.

Meanwhile, Israel’s Channel 12 reported that the port of Eilat will suspend operations starting Sunday due to financial distress, largely attributed to a sharp decline in revenue caused by the ongoing Houthi naval blockade in the Red Sea.

According to the report, the port has accumulated roughly 10 million shekels ($2.9 million) in debt, primarily due to unpaid municipal taxes. The network said ships that previously docked at Eilat have diverted to Ashdod and Haifa ports on the Mediterranean, citing “aggressive Houthi activity in the Red Sea.”

The Houthis have intensified missile and drone strikes on Israel since Israeli forces resumed their attacks on the Gaza Strip in March after two months of a shaky ceasefire.

Since November 2023, the group has also targeted commercial shipping in the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea in support of Palestinians in Gaza, where nearly 58,900 people have been killed in an Israeli onslaught.

Uncategorized

Israelis Cry For Help on The Gaza Battlefield

CrossFireArabia
July 17, 2025

By Dr Marwan Asmar

More Israeli soldiers are committing suicide than ever before. The answer for that is simple: They don’t want to be in Gaza.

But it’s tough luck! Their political masters led by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu say they must continue to fight, even if they lose their life in order to beat Hamas and quash the Palestinian resistance but this is not happening.

The road is long and murderous for both sides.

Today, it is the Palestinian factions who are taking up the military, bloody fight. Since Israel’s war with Iran ended towards the end of June, Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters stepped up their operations against Israeli soldiers in the different areas of Gaza. The military operations have become immense and with a sense of vigor in towns, cities, conurbations and neighborhoods the Israeli army said it had teeth-combed from any Palestinian fighters.

These operations, initially mainly involving sniping Israeli soldiers, but more importantly developed into ambushes, booby-trapping destroyed houses and bombs daringly carried by Palestine fighters and strung on Israeli tanks and troop carriers, are today stronger than ever happenings in this 21-month-war that started soon after 7 October, 2023.

Today, they stand as a symbol of resistance despite the utterances constantly made by Netanyahu and his Defense Minister Israel Katz who keep saying that the Israeli army is systematically dismantling Hamas and its military wing of fighters. But this is just fanciful imagination designed for the disoriented Israeli street that longer wants war but can’t muster enough courage to till Netanyahu and his extremist government to end the conflict.

After the war with Iran, Netanyahu stepped up his hawkish stances, mainly for domestic purposes, ie to stay in power and not go to jail regardless of what is happening on the Gaza war front and despite his peace claims for a ceasefire instigated by US president Donald Trump and the Israeli negotiating team sitting in the Qatari capital of Doha.

The team of men appear to be there as match-stick dolls waiting at the beck-and-call of Netanyahu and certainly not for the first time, and used time-and-again in this genocide and incessantly during the former Joe Biden administration era, which attempted to reach a ceasefire over the whole of 2024 but to no avail.

In this war Netanyahu had over-ridden all objectives and ultimatums to reach a peace deal and now being incessantly made by Trump, the last during his visit and the third since Trump entered the White House in January 2025. Today despite the character and push geared by Trump, Netanyahu’s will is still stronger and forceful.

But that may partly be because of the Zionist lobby in Washington that is today stronger than ever because of the purse-strings. Meanwhile Washington continues to be the financier of this genocide by providing Israel with mass weapons.

Netanyahu is on a crusade to end Hamas, and anyone who says ‘no’ to Israel. He is ignoring the voices of his top military men in the army that started to be made in the early days of this onslaught. And he continues to ignore them even today regardless of the fact the Israelis know that “you can’t beat Hamas and the other Palestinian factions” regardless of what literally was done to Gaza, turning it into rubble and eyesore wreckage.

Figures are mind-boggling. 100,000 tons of TNT thrown on Gaza in this genocide creating huge mounts of rubble – an unbelievable 50 million tons of wreckage – that would take 15 years to clear-out through 100 trucks working full time. This is not to say anything about the human factor where more than 60,000 men, women and children were slaughtered at a very conservative estimate.

Despite the killing and destruction today, the Palestinian resistance groups and fighters are regrouping and thinking and conjuring up new armed strategies and think tanks to beat the Israeli army with. In turn, the army is barely standing up according to Israeli experts with the military in a flaccid state of command and action from the north to the south of the Gaza Strip and in areas that have been brought to the ground over late 2023, 3024 and 2025 with the Israeli force complaining that they have “run out of places” to bomb in Gaza.

In this genocide, the Israeli airforce and tanks repeatedly missiled and bombed areas – homes, schools hospitals in different stages in a sense of heightened vengence that was displayed time and again. There were no fighters here but ordinary civilians made to move countless times and turned into domestic refugees living in tents and ramshackled UNRWA schools.

The Israeli military top brass, including generals, majors and rank-and-file soldiers have long complained through protests and petitions but these have fallen on the deaf ears of many in the political echelons of power like Netanyahu who refused to listen to them.

Meanwhile the shocks of the Gaza battlefields continue to bite. Israeli soldiers are today desperately taking their lives because of the psychological tremors they have been subjected to Gaza. One of the soldiers who killed himself recently, three in less than a week and a half, was responsible for carrying the dead bodies of soldiers killed in Gaza and Israel’s last war on Lebanon. Before committing suicide he applied to be committed to a psychiatric ward but needed to wait. On the fatal day, he set his car on fire with him inside.

Israel’s army is falling apart at a soundbyte speed but nobody is listening. On 25 June seven Israeli soldiers were burned alive in their tank in southern Gaza, in an area where the Israeli army was supposed to be in total control. This was particularly gruesome since the army admitted it took time to identify their charred bodies.

Their death set the ball-rolling for more. Almost every since then there has been reported daily deaths of soldiers killed in a fierce war involving Palestinian fighters. Sometimes the numbers go up from one to five and more. This is not to say anything about those that are injured in direct clashes.

The Israelis are forced to admit this because of their helicopters that arrive at the scene to pick the dead and injured and take back to nearby Israeli hospitals which has become an all-too familiar sight in this genocide.

Opinion

Middle East in a Cracked Mirror

Dr Khairi Janbek
July 16, 2025

By Dr Khairi Janbek

Every time the “new Middle East” which by the way has exciting resonance, be it conspiratorially or optimistically, is raised, one sees the new concept as exactly resembling exactly the old Middle East or is of the same replica.

We have grown accustomed to seeing the big turmoil in the Middle East, wars and regime changes, and each time we fall into the trap of seeing a conspiracy to change the boundaries of the Middle East, boundaries created with accords between Britain and France after WWI and which all countries of the region decry and condemn yet ironically fighting tooth and nail to preserve.

But what is this bogey which insinuates conspiracies and evil behind the cloak of a new Middle East.

Infact it started off idealistically as a reformist movement, basically economic as well as political reform, but with constant instability in the region, the term started to take another meaning, basically new alignments and new political understandings for the countries of the Middle East.

Essentially the way one sees it, the term now refers not to geography or reform – economic or political – but rather who are going to be the major players in the regions, who will be pulling the strings and will they relate to each other despite their contradictions and convergences.

For much of the recent history of the region the Trinity of Turkey, Israel, and Iran were the frame which contained the Arab problems within the Arab world, but as we have been seeing in recent history, these major players became part of the problems of the Arab world through their interference, seeking expansion or guaranteeing what they claim to be their national security concerns.

Now, and in the Donald Trump era, the concept of a new Middle East is still on track regarding the notion of who will be the new forces pulling the strings in the area, as for all intents and purposes, Iran as it seems has been relegated to a more background position regarding the affairs of the region, and Turkey with a circumscribed role, especially that the PKK, the leitmotif of Turkish interference in the area have laid down their arms.

Of course, now Israel is the power par excellence and the major player, but it needs a balancing actor from the Arab world this time, and the most likely candidate is Saudi Arabia.

However a Saudi balancing actor to Israel, is just not an easy feat to achieve, because such an actor cannot be based on contradictions alone, but also requires convergence. And this supposed convergence relies on the point of principle, the two-state solution to the Palestinian problem.

Now one is really not aware of the reasons behind Netanyahu’s rejection of the two-state solution, but certainly he is a hostage of his political alliances that keep his government afloat, thus making him avoid going back to court, and even worse, a possible jail term. As certainly for his allies, the rejection of a two-state solution is a point of principle.

Consequently, one believes, without the common ground with Saudi Arabia, of putting back on the table the issue of the two-state solution, there won’t be a new Middle East of two major actors, but rather one temporary major actor, being Israel for a temporary new Middle East!

Uncategorized

Three Israeli Soldiers Kill Themselves in Under 2 Weeks

CrossFireArabia
July 15, 2025

Three Israeli soldiers committed suicide in under two weeks after serving in the war Gaza.

This is a harrowing made increasingly so after Israel’s Channel 12 stated that an Israeli soldier took his life after serving in the war in Gaza that in now reaching its second year.

Meanwhile the Israeli Haaretz daily stated that 15 Israeli soldiers have killed themselves since the beginning of 2025.

This is an unprecedented for the Israeli army and well above in the previous years. For in 2024, 21 soldiers committed suicide after serving in the Gaza war which started soon after 7 October, 2023.

The Israeli newspaper stated most of those that took their lives were reserve soldiers that entered the army recently and after the horrors they saw in the Gaza battlefield and which is increasingly affecting their psychological state of mind.

The Israeli Institute for Security Affairs is warning the Israeli soldiers are facing the toughest battles in the different areas of Gaza and who are facing strenuous resistance not only from Hamas fighters but those from different Palestinian factions.

The Institute states the Israeli army in Gaza is facing the biggest crisis in human resources in its history and needs tens of thousands of extra soldiers because of the intensity of fighting on the Gaza battlefields.

Opinion

‘Mauritanians See Israeli Normalization Sinful’

CrossFireArabia
July 14, 2025

By AlDaho Sohaib

Mauritania is not a marginal country or a geographical anomaly. It is a country of silent history, long patience, and sovereignty that cannot be bought. It is the land of jurists who taught the deserts the meaning of light, and poets who made pulpits of wisdom from the sands.

Our president visited the United States, as Arab and African presidents do, not to beg or sign anything that violates conscience, but to knock on the doors of partnership and convey the voice of a small country with great pride. Has every visit to the West become an accusation? Is anyone who meets with an American official considered suspect in the eyes of those writing from behind the media veil?

Mauritania stands independently, making its own decisions, and choosing its partnerships, far removed from dependency or empty alignment.

We know that there are those who are unhappy to see Nouakchott sitting with Washington without tutelage and negotiating its interests without permission.

We say it without hesitation, and in a high-pitched voice: Mauritania is not about to normalize relations with the Zionist entity, not now or tomorrow.

Not only because it would be a betrayal of a principle, but because normalization, for Mauritanians, is an unforgivable sin, as long as Israel occupies Arab land, desecrates our holy sites, and persecutes our people in Gaza, the West Bank, and Jerusalem.

Anyone who knows this people knows that Palestine, in their conscience, does not represent a card in political discussions, but rather a constant, unwavering call.

The President of the Republic, Mr. Mohamed Ould Cheikh El Ghazouani, known for his political moderation and adherence to national principles, has never wavered from his position in support of Palestine, and neither he nor his government has issued any indication of a deviation from this line.

We write not to offend, but to preserve the weight of this position. We respond not because we are weak, but because we refuse to have the image of an entire nation reduced to a single, insinuating line, or to have a fleeting accusation pinned on his sovereign visit. Mauritania is built on principles, not on momentary positions.

It is read through its history, not through tweets written from behind a political veil.

If you want the truth, Mauritania has never sought testimony from anyone, and it will not accept anyone dictating whom to visit or whom to talk to.

It follows its own path, does not sway where the wind blows, nor does it follow an extended shadow.
It sits with the great, engages in dialogue with partners, and raises the Palestinian flag in its heart as well as in its streets. It does not need anyone to remind it of those who have always been with it, in good times and bad.

The writer is a member of the Mauritanian Parliament