Israel struggles to halt attacks from faraway foe that was once off-radar

JERUSALEM – For years, the Houthis were the enemy most Israelis didn’t know they had.

Now the Iranian-backed militia that controls much of northern Yemen, more than 1,600km from Israel, is keeping them up at night – literally – with a string of attacks on Israeli soil. And challenged by a lack of precise intelligence on the whereabouts of the group’s leaders and weapons stores, analysts say, Israel is struggling to stop them.

After months of sporadic missile and drone launches towards Israel in solidarity with Hamas, their Palestinian ally in the Gaza Strip, the Houthis recently escalated a campaign against Israel, launching ballistic missiles towards it almost nightly over the past week.

The militia appeared undeterred, even after Israeli warplanes on Dec 26 carried out their fourth and most brazen round of retaliatory strikes in Yemen, damaging the international airport in the capital Sanaa and other infrastructure.

The Houthis then fired a missile towards Tel Aviv before dawn on Dec 27 and another at around 2am local time on Dec 28, setting off air raid sirens. Both missiles were intercepted, but the sirens sent millions of people running into bomb shelters in their pyjamas.

The militia has withstood years of bombardment by a Saudi-led coalition that tried to oust it, pressure from Emirati-backed forces supporting the internationally recognised government in Yemen, and US and British strikes in retaliation for Houthi attacks on shipping in the Red Sea. Now it is displaying a similar resilience against Israel.

“We have a problem,” said Mr Zohar Palti, a former director of intelligence at Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence service, and a former director of policy in the Ministry of Defence. Israel, on its own, does not have a “patent” for solving the problem, he added.

The Israeli security establishment has never prioritised Yemen and has not expended efforts in gathering intelligence on the Houthis over the years, according to experts.

Israel had “too many balls in the air”, Mr Palti said, citing Iran and its nuclear programme, Hamas militants in Gaza, the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia in Lebanon, and dealing with counter-terrorism the world over.

“It’s a matter of investment,” he said. “It may take days, weeks or months, but in the end, we will bring the intelligence.”

Still, Mr Palti added, it is unlikely to be Israel’s top priority, with many preferring to invest in thwarting Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

The Houthis began firing on Israel soon after the Oct 7, 2023, Hamas-led assault on the country, which prompted the war in Gaza. The militants said they were acting in solidarity with Hamas and Palestinians in general. The Houthis also tried to blockade Israel by launching missiles and drones at cargo vessels crossing the Red Sea, one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes, significantly disrupting international trade.

At first, the threat to Israel appeared distant compared with that posed by Hamas on its southern border and Hezbollah on its northern one. Houthi attack drones would take about 10 hours to reach Israel’s southern port of Eilat. These drones and the occasional ballistic missile fired from Yemen were often intercepted far from Israel’s territory or airspace with the help of international forces in the Persian Gulf region and were regarded by many Israelis as a somewhat bizarre nuisance.

But a drone fired by the Houthis in July took a different route. Flying in from the west over the Mediterranean coast, it evaded Israel’s defences and slammed into an apartment building in Tel Aviv, the country’s commercial centre, killing one man and wounding several others. Israel struck back the next day with its first barrage of air strikes on Yemen, bombing the vital Red Sea port of Hodeida, which is controlled by the Houthi militia.

The long-distance exchanges have continued, even as Israel’s multi-pronged battles in the region appear to be winding down. Hamas’ military capabilities have been severely diminished, a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah went into effect in late November, and the government of ousted president Bashar al-Assad in Syria has fallen. But the Houthis have begun escalating attacks on Israel, vowing to continue until Israel ends the war in Gaza.

The warhead of one intercepted missile badly damaged a school in a Tel Aviv suburb in December, landing at night when the building was empty. Another missile got through and struck a playground in Tel Aviv, damaging the surrounding apartment buildings and slightly wounding 16 people.

Israel’s leaders have since ratcheted up their tough talk.

“The Houthis, too, will learn what Hamas, Hezbollah, the Assad regime and others have learnt,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Dec 25.

On Dec 26, after the Israeli strikes, Mr Netanyahu said in an interview with an Israeli TV station that “we are just getting started with them”, referring to the Houthis. Defence Minister Israel Katz has vowed to hunt down Houthi leaders.

Still, analysts note that it took the US a decade to track down and kill Osama bin Laden, Al-Qaeda’s founder, and it took Israel more than a year after the Oct 7 attack to close in on and kill Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in Gaza, a tiny coastal enclave. If Israel knew where the Houthi leaders were, it would probably have killed them already, the analysts say.

In addition to the airport in Sanaa, a Houthi stronghold, the Israeli military also struck the Hezyaz and Ras Kanatib power stations and infrastructure in the ports of Hodeida, Salif and Ras Kanatib on Yemen’s western coast. Israel described the targets as “military infrastructure used by the Houthi terrorist regime for its military activities”.

At least four people were killed and 21 others wounded in the attack on Dec 26, according to the Saba state news agency, citing Yemen’s Health Ministry.

Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organisation, who was at the airport waiting to board a plane at the time, said in a social media post that the air traffic control tower, departure lounge and runway were damaged.

But analysts say that damaging Yemen’s national infrastructure is not likely to stop the Houthis from attacking Israel.

Dr Farea Al-Muslimi, a Yemeni research fellow at London-based research institute Chatham House, said of the Houthis: “They took everything by force, they don’t rule by consensus, they don’t care, and they are willing to go very, very far.” NYTIMES