How Will Israel Stop The Houthi Missiles!

By Dr Marwan Asmar

Houthis missiles continue to rain down on Israel and that’s not an understatement. Only in this past month of May Israel was subject to 16 ballistic missiles. That’s almost one every two days. Sometimes two missiles were fired in one day.

On Thursday another ballistic missile was fired on Tel Aviv that stopped a football match for at least 10 minutes in a packed stadium of 30,000 people. Among the spectators, who were ordered to lie down, was Israeli president Isaac Herzog who was scurried to safety. 

The incoming missile for Ben Gurion Airport set sirens in over 300 major cities, towns, villages and settlements between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

In addition to that, and something that has become normal for Israelis since 7 October, 2023, 3 to 4 million hurried to underground shelters disrupting their lives and work processes.

This is not to say anything about the continuing psychological blows inflicted on them, and on a daily basis. This is the first time they have been subjected to what has become a set of nightmare occurrences first from Hezbollah and now the Houthi missiles travelling over 2000 kilometers north diagonally over the Red Sea to hit Israeli targets.

Thursday’s attack was in response to Wednesday’s Israeli bombing – the second time since 6 May – of the Sanaa International airport. Israeli bombs already destroyed the airport and the last attack made through 10 Israeli warplanes finished off the only aircraft left that belonged to the Yemeni airlines. The plane had just arrived in Sanaa from the Jordan capital of Amman.

And a day before that the Houthis had fired another missile on Tel Aviv. While most of the missiles are fired down by the Israeli forces before they reach their targets they have created tremendous confusion in the Israeli airwaves. Today tens of airlines have stopped flying to Tel Aviv despite the pleadings of the Israeli government that Israeli airports are safe. 

Since January 2025, 35 ballistic missiles have been launched on Israel from different locations in Yemen. Also, since early this year, 14 so-called attack drones were launched from Yemen to strike targets in Israel. 

As well, and only since March 29 missiles and 9 drones were fired from Yemen because Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu relaunched the war on Gaza on 19th March. Despite the Israeli precautions and ground batteries that shot down these missiles, they have created much debris on the ground when they came down to earth.

With the 16 ballistic missiles launched in May, four drones were also fired on different Israeli cities, statistics provided and confirmed by the Israeli army. It further states that  since 7 October 2023 the Houthis launched 70 missiles on Israeli sites, including ports, airports,  the Mossad headquarters in Tel Aviv and many more.

The Israeli army state these exclude the 330 drones that were fired on Israel over the past 19 months of the Israel genocide on Gaza taking the number of Palestinian deaths to 54,321 with the number of injuries at 123,770.

As a result, the Houthis succeeded in imposing an air embargo on Israel in May as their leadership insists. Their projectiles have stopped 10s of international airlines from flying to the Ben Gurion Airport with British Airways and the low-cost Ryanair being the latest to suspend flights.

These are the latest to follow the Lufthansa group which include SWISS, Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines and Eurowings. They have already stopped going to Tel Aviv and are watching the situation carefully before they take the step of resetablishing air connections.

Since 4 May other planes that suspended flights to Israel include  Latvian airline, AirBaltic, easyJet, United Airlines, Iberia and Transavia.

However, among the few foreign airlines that recently resumed flight services to Israel are Air France, Delta, Wizz Air, Ethiopian Airlines, Etihad Airways and Greece’s Aegean Airlines states The Times of Israel.

Unprecedented

The Thursday ballistic missile was unprecedented because the Israeli president was watching. The match had to stop while he was rushed away to safety. The Israeli media says the match was stopped twice when the missiles were launched from Yemen and when tens of thousands of people were told to lie on the ground for 20 minutes and a second time when spectators booed Herzog.

The Houthi leadership already warned the Israelis to do “what it will” because it will not stop firing the ballistic missiles on Israel until the latter stops its war on Gaza.

They say that Israel can bomb Yemen as much as it wants but it will not stop the missiles on Tel Aviv and different areas like Eilat.  Despite putting on a strong face Israel is in a quandary. About 30 Israeli warplanes took part in destroying the Sanaa Airport on 5 May but the Yemenis have not flinched.

Now, the Israeli Minister Israel Katz is in a vehement mood and is warning that Israel will continue to bomb and re-bomb existing sites till the end if need be. Truth be told however, the Israelis are bombing indiscriminately as they don’t know and figure out where the Houthis missiles are being fired from in Yemen.

Netanyahu is convinced that Iran is supplying the Houthis with the missiles and that’s why he wants to hit the country but the problem with that is the Trump administration at present is  talking to Tehran about reaching an agreement on its nuclear file and is sending direct messages to Netanyahu to lay off that country and not attempt any foolish act like striking its nuclear facilities.

Thus only time will tell how international relations will unravel especially since Trump reached a deal with the Houthis at the beginning of May that they would stop bombing them if they desist from attacking American ships and planes. The previous months or so the US waged a military campaign on the Houthis that led to nowhere but a costly war of $1 billion.

With the US out of the way, it can be said the Houthis are having a field day on continuing their strikes on Israel. Their message is simple: Stop bombing Gaza and we will stop striking Israel.

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Can ‘Realist’ Trump Pull Off Gaza Ceasefire?

By Michael Jansen

During his ongoing visits to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the Emirates, US President Donald Trump seeks to focus on business opportunities and investment in the US rather than address the negative political realities to which he contributed during his first term (2017-2021).

At that time, he dismissed the two-state solution in favour of “The Deal of the Century” which would give Palestinians a degree of autonomy within Israel. He defunded UNRWA, recognised Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, moved the US embassy there, and said the US no longer considers Israeli settlements illegal overturning a 1978 policy. The fate of the refugees, Jerusalem, and settlers were meant to be negotiated under the two-state solution by the sides under the 1993 Oslo accord. He closed the US consulate in occupied East Jerusalem which served Palestinians and the PLO office in Washington. Trump recognized Israeli annexation of Syria’s occupied Golan.

Trump began his second term by calling for the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza which would be redeveloped as a Middle East Riviera instead of exerting pressure on Israel to end the Gaza war and enable its reconstruction. Under Trump’s real estate venture Gazan Palestinians were supposed to settle in Egypt and Jordan, which along with all the Arabs flatly rejected this proposal. Egypt drew up a counterproposal to reconstruct devastated Gaza while its population stays put.

His resort scheme has angered the Arab public from the Gulf to the Atlantic. His call for Saudi Arabia to establish relations with Israel has been rejected as Riyadh has said it will normalise when there is a Palestinian state with its capital in Jerusalem.

Since Trump made Saudi Arabia his first foreign destination in 2017 during his first term, the region has changed significantly by pivoting to the East. Saudi Arabia and the Emirates have cultivated ties with Russia – Riyadh’s partner on oil production and pricing – and China which buys Gulf oil and exports billions of dollars in goods to the Gulf. The Emirates, Egypt and Iran joined BRICS (the grouping of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) while Saudi Arabia applied but did not follow through. China mediated Saudi-Iranian reconciliation. This has ended Iran’s isolation in the region.

On the positive side, early in this term Trump opened talks with Iran over its nuclear programme to replace the 2015 deal from which he withdrew in 2018. A fifth round of talks is expected. Although Trump wants to be a peacemaker, he has threatened war if the talks fail.

As a peacemaker, Trump bombed Yemen heavily to force Yemen’s Houthis to end attacks on international commercial and naval vessels in the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea. The Houthis and US agreed to end this confrontation. Trump has not, however, halted Houthi drone and ballistic missile attacks on Israel which the Houthis say will stop if Israel observes a ceasefire or ends the war on Gaza.

Trump has not planned to stop in Israel during this Gulf tour, indicating that there is some distance between him and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. He has not only refused to ceasefire in Gaza but also maintained a ten-week blockade of the strip. He could have done both to ease Trump’s swing around the Gulf where Gaza is high on the agendas of the rulers and public. Since Netanyahu has carried on with his Gaza war, Trump has ignored him when resuming talks with Iran on limiting its nuclear programme in exchange for lifting sanctions and agreeing to a ceasefire with Yemen’s Houthi. The ceasefire has been welcomed by Washington’s Arab allies, particularly Saudi Arabia which had been urging an end to US attacks on Yemen before Trump began his tour.

Without Israeli involvement, the US has also negotiated with Hamas over the release on Monday of US-Israeli hostage Edan Alexander. For Trump, this is a greatly desired success in the US. In Israel, families of hostages who are not US-Israel dual citizens fear their relatives will be forgotten by Netanyahu who is determined to not only continue with the war but also to expand it once Trump departs from the region. Hostage families are not alone in their suspicions. A majority (54 per cent) of Israelis said that the war was being driven by personal rather than security reasons. Only 21 per cent agreed with Netanyahu’s prioritisation of eliminating Hamas over rescuing the hostages. A March poll showed 70 per cent of Israelis wanted Netanyahu to resign.

He has adopted this stance for several reasons. First, right-wingers in his coalition have vowed to pull out if he ends the war. Second, once the war is over, Netanyahu will be called upon to account for lax Israeli security in the south where Hamas breached the fence on October 7th, 2023, killed 1,200 Israelis and visitors and abducted another 251. There was no excuse for laxity. Young female Israeli soldiers deployed as “watchers” along that part of the border with Gaza, warned repeatedly that Hamas was conducting drills and manoeuvres ahead of an attack. Their warnings were not taken serioiusly by senior Israeli officers. Some of these women were killed and some captured. Third, as long as the war is being waged, Netanyahu will not have to explain how lightly armed Hamas fighters have managed to carry on the fight while the mighty Israeli army and air force levelled Gaza and killed 53,000 Palestinians. Netanyahu has a lot of explaining to do.

Jansen is a columnist for the Jordan Times

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Fires Continue to Rage in Israel

Israeli newspaper Maariv reported, Friday, that fires swept the country resumed in fully force at the western suburbs of Jerusalem.

“Hours after the massive fire in the Latrun area (between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv) was brought under control, the fire resumed in the area today.”

Maariv added that Israeli firefighting crews rushed to the scene in a bid to put out the burning flames.

But, the Israeli Fire Authority said in a post on the X platform that: “There are no dramatic events currently in the fire zones in Jerusalem.”

It added: “Several points of smoke rising are being monitored, and firefighting forces and aircraft continue to work to bring the fires under control.”

On Thursday evening, Israel announced that it had brought under control the fires that swept through the area between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, about 30 hours after they broke out and consumed approximately 20,000 dunams.

Hebrew media outlets, including the official broadcasting authority, reported that the fires were likely caused by “the negligence of hikers,” rather than by arson.

Contrary to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s accusation that individuals started them, Channel 12 reported that “the central fires in the Jerusalem Hills were not set deliberately and are believed to be the result of negligence.”

Authorities are investigating the cause of the fires in the same area where similar, less intense blazes occurred last week.

The Times of Israel news website quoted President Isaac Herzog as saying, Thursday: “This fire is part of the climate crisis that must not be ignored. It requires us to prepare for serious and significant challenges and to make decisions, including appropriate legislation.”

The fires between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, the largest in years, have forced the evacuation of 10 towns and settlements and have spread due to high temperatures and strong winds in the forested area as reported in Anadolu.

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Netanyahu’s Convoy Hits Motorcyclist

The convoy of the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was involved in a car accident, Tuesday evening, outside his office in west Jerusalem.

The accident is trending on the social media with much images including breaking news of the accident.

According to the Jerusalem Post a vehicle in the convoy hit a 17-year-old motorcyclist as it was leaving a ceremony in remembrance of Israeli soldiers killed in the war on Gaza.

The English Israeli daily said it was not clear whether Netanyahu was in one of the vehicles at the time, however Kan, the Israeli official broadcaster, confirmed Netanyahu was in the convoy but he emerged unharmed.

KAN also confirmed that Netanyahu convoy collided with the motorcycle.

This is not the first time Israeli government officials have been involved in accidents. In April 2024, the Israeli media reported that the car of Israeli Education Minister Haim Biton was involved in a traffic accident in Jerusalem, seriously injuring his father.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir was also involved in a traffic accident in April 2024, resulting in his hospitalization and treatment according to Jordan24.

The Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth reported that a vehicle belonging to the personal security unit of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s convoy was involved in a traffic accident near Cinema City in Jerusalem.

The Israeli Broadcasting Corporation (Kan) reported that “the prime minister’s convoy was involved in a traffic accident and stopped moving.”

Kan confirmed that Benjamin Netanyahu was unharmed in the accident, which occurred near his office in Jerusalem.

The Israeli Broadcasting Corporation indicated that “the prime minister’s convoy collided with a motorcycle. Netanyahu was in the convoy, but he moved away from the vehicle involved in the accident.”

It is worth noting that this accident is not the first involving an official Israeli government official. In April 2024, Israeli media reported that the car of Israeli Education Minister Haim Biton was involved in a traffic accident in Jerusalem, seriously injuring his father.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir was also involved in a traffic accident in April 2024, resulting in his hospitalization and treatment.

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How The West Came to Control Arabism

Dr Elias Akleh

The Arab world lies in one of the most important global strategic locations, controlling most of the major commercial transportation routes. It is rich in natural agricultural and industrial resources and has always been a prime target for Western colonial powers, which periodically launched military campaigns to occupy and control our world, starting from the heart of the Arab world, Palestine, known as the Holy Land, and expanding to the Levant in the north — Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Jordan— then to Egypt, and it’s rich in its fertile Nile River, and finally to the Arabian Peninsula in the south.

When we look back in history, we find these military colonial campaigns against the Arab world—especially Palestine—were numerous, even dating back to before Christ, such as the campaign of Alexander the Great (336 BC–323 BC) and the Roman colonial rule (63 BC–324 AD). Moving on to the ages after Christ, we recall, for example, the eight Crusades over nearly two centuries (1096–1291), followed by Napoleon Bonaparte’s campaign (1799–1801), and finally the Talmudic Zionist campaign initiated by Theodor Herzl in 1896, which continues into the present day.

These post-Christ colonial campaigns were primarily charged with religious fervor and can be termed as religious wars. In fact, Pope Urban II in 1095 described them as a “holy war” to liberate the holy city of Jerusalem from the “brutal” Muslim Arabs. As for Napoleon Bonaparte, who was defeated at the walls of Acca, he promised the Jews he would help them reach the “Promised Land,” holy Jerusalem, if they aided him in his colonial campaign.

Finally, at the present time, Britain, France and Germany came first, followed by all the US presidents who started supporting Zionist colonialism financially, politically and militarily to “recover” the “Promised Land” promised by a “racist” god biased towards the Jews to “rebuild” the alleged Temple of Solomon in the city of Jerusalem and to build Greater Israel.

All these colonial campaigns attempted to divide the Arab world into small, weak states by perpetrating genocides against their many Arab peoples. They destroyed and burned cities, tortured and killed civilians, and raped women, girls, and even boys, just as Zionist Israel is doing now in Palestine. However, past genocides cannot be compared to the brutality and brutality of the Zionist genocide against the Arabs of Palestine, from 1947 to the present day, due to the power of modern, highly destructive and lethal weapons.

The Arab nation was able to defeat all past colonial campaigns because of the people’s sense of belonging to their homeland and their unity, undivided by distance or borders, and led by brave, honorable, national leaders who sought the best for the entire nation.

The western colonialists noticed this inherent sense of belonging within the nation and decided to target it. After World War II, Britain, then the Great Power, agreed with France in the Sykes-Picot Agreement, to break the pact it signed with Sharif Hussein bin Ali. This agreement divided the Middle East into small states, appointing rulers loyal first to Britain and then to the current American administrations.

To further weaken these Arab states, the Western Axis powers divided the economies and financial systems of these states, rendering them alien and compete with each other. They also sowed division and religious, regional, and ethnic animosity among the Arab nation, allowing Zionist colonialism to penetrate the Arab world, beginning with Palestine.

Unfortunately, most Arab leaders failed to attempt to restore Arab unity and unify the people, economy, and currency, as the late Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser attempted to. Instead, what was spread was division, hatred, competition, animosity, and even war among Arab peoples, as has happened in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, and what is currently happening in Arab African countries such as Libya, Algeria, Morocco, and Sudan.

Worst of all is the spread of the philosophy of distancing oneself from the problems of any neighboring Arab country. Some leaders consider that the wars that take place in a neighboring Arab country do not concern them as long as these wars do not affect their country, even in the short term. We see this now clearly in what is happening in Palestine, especially the extermination of the Arabs of Gaza.

The heads of neighboring Arab countries are trying to convince their people that their national interest requires non-interference and to distance themselves to avoid destructive wars and to leave the Palestinians to resist the Israeli occupation alone.

Israel, launching pad

It would be better for these leaders to warn and inform their people that Israel is a launching pad for a broad western colonial campaign aimed firstly at destroying the Arab homeland and colonizing it by planting Zionist terrorism in the form of the Israeli entity which aims to expand from the Nile to the Euphrates, from the far south of the Nile – on the Sudan borders – to the far north of the Euphrates – to the Turkish borders – to build what is called Greater Israel in the Promised Land promised by a racist land broker god to a criminal, savage, genocidal people.

Secondly, for this Zionist entity to grow from Great Israel to Greater Israel it is going to move to the south to include all of the Arabian Peninsula – to recover Khaybar and Yathrib and their dependencies – then move west to the northern coast of the African continent, extending to Morocco and control the entire Arab world, monopolizing  the most important strategic locations internationally, and global maritime trade routes between East and West, including the Strait of Hormuz on the Persian Gulf to the Arabian Sea, passing through Bab al-Mandab Strait to the Red Sea, then via the Suez Canal to the ports of occupied Palestine, and from there to the Western world via the Mediterranean Sea to Europe. And across the Giberalter Strait to the Americas – the ultimate goal of the Greater Israel Project.

All we have to do is listen to and understand the Israeli (and American) statements, both public and broadcast, clearly and vociferously, that the goal of Israel and the West is to exterminate all Arabs, just as they did to the Native Americans—they call them Red Indians— to build Greater Israel and control the Arab world and its natural resources. The evidence of these goals is clear, such as the destruction of Iraq and the theft of its wealth, and the establishment of American military bases along the Arab states on the western coast of the Persian Gulf.

We also witnessed how the Western colonial powers destroyed, divided, and weakened Libya and stole its wealth, then spread enmity between Algeria and Morocco, waged a war of extermination in Sudan, and then divided Syria and Lebanon, weakened Jordan, and effectively occupied it with American, British, and French military bases. All that remains is Egypt, which is subjected to economic occupation through conditional World Bank debt and by allowing other countries to purchase Egyptian land, real estate, and companies, which will ultimately lead to Egypt’s economic collapse.

Many people from all over the world, regardless of their ethnicity, religion, or language, are taking to the streets in massive, daily and weekly marches and demonstrations in solidarity with the Arabs of Palestine, against Israeli brutality, against Western countries, and against their own governments, which fund and supports Israel politically and militarily.

They wonder why the Arab peoples don’t take to the streets in solidarity with the Arabs of Palestine, demanding that their Arab governments personally intervene to protect and assist the Palestinians, instead of these governments begging for assistance from the powerless United Nations. Have the Arabs lost their humanity and solidarity with their Arab brothers in Palestine, or are they simply cowards and selfish and unable to do anything?

Dr. Elias Akleh is a Palestinian writer who contributed this article the Arabic Al Rai Al Youm website. This is a translated piece that was slightly edited at the end for the sake of brevity.

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