Yemenis Agree on Need to End the Houthis Militarily

Houthi supporters attend a rally to mark the first anniversary of the killing of Saleh al-Sammad, who was the head of the Houthi Supreme Political Council (File Photo: Reuters)
Houthi supporters attend a rally to mark the first anniversary of the killing of Saleh al-Sammad, who was the head of the Houthi Supreme Political Council (File Photo: Reuters)
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Yemenis Agree on Need to End the Houthis Militarily

Houthi supporters attend a rally to mark the first anniversary of the killing of Saleh al-Sammad, who was the head of the Houthi Supreme Political Council (File Photo: Reuters)
Houthi supporters attend a rally to mark the first anniversary of the killing of Saleh al-Sammad, who was the head of the Houthi Supreme Political Council (File Photo: Reuters)

Houthi militia leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi commemorated the eighth year of war and terrorism, rejecting all international and regional calls for peace and disregarding the inter-Yemeni consultations hosted by the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).

Houthi disregarded the tragedies his group caused to Yemenis at the humanitarian, economic, and cultural levels during the past years. Instead, he asked his supporters to continue with levies and mobilizations.

He also determined his conditions for ending the war, announcing that his group should rule the country and the Coalition to Support Legitimacy must stop interfering in Yemeni affairs.

Meanwhile, Yemenis are confident the Houthi group will never stop its military escalation, whether inside the country or through terrorist attacks targeting navigation in the Red Sea and threatening the global economy, including the recent attack on the Aramco facility in Jeddah.

Yemenis are also confident that Houthis do not want peace based on the three references, nor does Iran, which is wagering that the power of arms will subject Yemen to its racist rule.

Observers believe that ending the Houthi militias militarily and disarming them will achieve peace.

Yemeni writer and journalist Ahmed Abbas said that the Houthi militia responds negatively to every call for peace and dialogue.

Speaking to Asharq Al-Awsat, Abbas said that the Gulf Cooperation Council's invitation to the militia to attend the upcoming Riyadh consultations was met with the military escalation and attacks against civilians in Saudi Arabia.

He indicated that the group attacked oil facilities, unaware of the threat this poses to the global economy, and fully aware that it will only be met with timid condemnations from the international community.

Iran awaits the nuclear agreement that will lift the economic sanctions, said Abbas, adding that Tehran incited the Houthis to pressure and achieve the maximum in its nuclear plans, which would have been finalized hadn't it been for the Russian-Ukrainian crisis.

He explained that the attacks were focused on oil facilities, sending a message to the international community that Iranian oil can compensate any shortages caused by the embargo on Russian oil and gas.

The journalist noted that the legitimacy and the coalition supporting it must utilize new mechanisms to pressure the international community because the threat of the Houthi group "can only be curbed or reduced through getting rid of it and uprooting it."

Abbas expects the new nuclear agreement to liberate Iran economically and increase its support for all its arms, especially the Houthis.

Yemeni political analyst, Mahmoud al-Taher, believes that the unprecedented Houthi escalation against energy supplies is related to "Western pressures on oil exporters to increase production, as a result of the crisis in Western markets, and the lack of a firm response by the international community, which encouraged the Houthis to launch more attacks."

In an interview with Asharq Al-Awsat, Taher stated that the Houthis reject any dialogue in Riyadh and ignore other Yemeni political components.

Houthis want the dialogue to be with the Coalition that Supports Legitimacy directly, to portray that the war is with these countries, not between the Yemeni people and a group that has turned against the people, according to Taher.

The analyst asserted that the Houthi escalation would only be contained by neutralizing the danger and launching a ground military operation with heavy air support, similar to the ground military operations in Shabwa and Harib last January.

Yemeni journalist and political analyst Wadah al-Jalil considered the Houthi escalation a challenge to the international community in light of the current energy crisis due to the war in Ukraine.

He told Asharq Al-Awsat that Houthis want all parties to make concessions, recognize them, and enable them to carry out their project, adding that Iran is behind the hostilities aiming to confirm its power, presence, and ability to harm everyone's interests.

Jalil said that Iran wants to send a message that it can target all oil facilities in the region, noting that he believes international actors involved in the Russian-Ukrainian crisis may have given the "green light" for the attacks, aiming that Saudi Arabia and the UAE will increase their oil production to alleviate the problem.

He accused the parties of exploiting Houthis to blackmail the two Gulf states, providing logistical support, and enabling them to expand their influence.

Jalil believes that the best way to end the Houthi escalation is through a firm and decisive confrontation with the Houthis and classifying them as a terrorist group.

He called for withdrawing all the group's privileges obtained through UN organizations and bodies operating in its control areas, enabling the Yemeni government to restore its sovereignty.



In Lebanon, a Family's Memories are Detonated Along With Their Village

Destroyed buildings lie in ruin on Lebanon’s side of the border with Israel, amid ongoing hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, as seen from Mount Addir, northern Israel, November 4, 2024. REUTERS/Violeta Santos Moura
Destroyed buildings lie in ruin on Lebanon’s side of the border with Israel, amid ongoing hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, as seen from Mount Addir, northern Israel, November 4, 2024. REUTERS/Violeta Santos Moura
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In Lebanon, a Family's Memories are Detonated Along With Their Village

Destroyed buildings lie in ruin on Lebanon’s side of the border with Israel, amid ongoing hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, as seen from Mount Addir, northern Israel, November 4, 2024. REUTERS/Violeta Santos Moura
Destroyed buildings lie in ruin on Lebanon’s side of the border with Israel, amid ongoing hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, as seen from Mount Addir, northern Israel, November 4, 2024. REUTERS/Violeta Santos Moura

Ayman Jaber’s memories are rooted in every corner of Mhaibib, the village in southern Lebanon he refers to as his “habibti,” the Arabic word for “beloved.” The root of the village’s name means “the lover” or “the beloved.”
Reminiscing about his childhood sweetheart, the 45-year-old avionics technician talks about how the young pair would meet in a courtyard near his uncle's house, The Associated Press said.
“I used to wait for her there to see her,” Jaber recalls with a smile. "Half of the village knew about us.”
The fond memory contrasts sharply with recent images of his hometown.
Mhaibib, perched on a hill close to the Israeli border, was leveled by a series of explosions on Oct. 16. The Israeli army released a video showing blasts ripping through the village in the Marjayoun province, razing dozens of homes to dust.
The scene has been repeated in villages across southern Lebanon since Israel launched its invasion a month ago with the stated goal of pushing Hezbollah militants back from the border. On Oct. 26, massive explosions in and around Odaisseh sparked an earthquake alert in northern Israel.
Israel says it wants to destroy a massive network of Hezbollah tunnels in the border area. But for the people who have been displaced, the attacks are also destroying a lifetime of memories.
Mhaibib had endured sporadic targeting since Hezbollah and Israeli forces began exchanging fire on Oct. 8 last year.
Jaber was living in Aramoun, just south of Beirut, before the war, and the rest of his family evacuated from Mhaibib after the border skirmishes ignited. Some of them left their possessions behind and sought refuge in Syria. Jaber's father and two sisters, Zeinab and Fatima, moved in with him.
In the living room of their temporary home, the siblings sip Arabic coffee while their father chain-smokes.
“My father breaks my heart. He is 70 years old, frail and has been waiting for over a year to return to Mhaibib,” Zeinab said. “He left his five cows there. He keeps asking, ‘Do you think they’re still alive?’”
Mhaibib was a close-knit rural village, with about 70 historic stone homes lining its narrow streets. Families grew tobacco, wheat, mulukhiyah (jute mallow) and olives, planting them each spring and waking before dawn in the summer to harvest the crops.
Hisham Younes, who runs the environmental organization Green Southerners, says generations of southerners admired Mhaibib for its one-or two-story stone homes, some built by Jaber’s grandfather and his friends.
“Detonating an entire village is a form of collective punishment and war crime. What do they gain from destroying shrines, churches and old homes?” Younes asks.
Abdelmoe’m Shucair, the mayor of neighboring Mays el Jabal, told the Associated Press that the last few dozen families living in Mhaibib fled before the Israeli destruction began, as had residents of surrounding villages.
Jaber's sisters attended school in Mays al-Jabal. That school was also destroyed in a series of massive explosions.
After finishing her studies in Beirut, Zeinab worked in a pharmacy in the neighboring village of Blida. That pharmacy, too, is gone after the Israeli military detonated part of that village. Israeli forces even bulldozed their village cemetery where generations of family members are buried.
“I don’t belong to any political group,” Zeinab says. “Why did my home, my life, have to be taken from me?”
She says she can't bring herself to watch the video of her village’s destruction. “When my brother played it, I ran from the room.”
To process what’s happening, Fatima says she closes her eyes and takes herself back to Mhaibib. She sees the sun setting, vividly painting the sky stretching over their family gatherings on the upstairs patio, framed by their mother’s flowers.
The family painstakingly expanded their home over a decade.
“It took us 10 years to add just one room,” Fatima said. “First, my dad laid the flooring, then the walls, the roof and the glass windows. My mom sold a year’s worth of homemade preserves to furnish it.” She paused. “And it was gone in an instant.”
In the midst of war, Zeinab married quietly. Now she’s six months pregnant. She had hoped to be back in Mhaibib in time for the delivery.
Her brother was born when Mhaibib and other villages in southern Lebanon were under Israeli occupation. Jaber remembers traveling from Beirut to Mhaibib, passing through Israeli checkpoints and a final crossing before entering the village.
“There were security checks and interrogations. The process used to take a full or half a day,” he says. And inside the village, they always felt like they were “under surveillance.”
His family also fled the village during the war with Israel in 2006, and when they returned they found their homes vandalized but still standing. An uncle and a grandmother were among those killed in the 34-day conflict, but a loquat tree the matriarch had planted next to their home endured.
This time, there is no home to return to and even the loquat tree is gone.
Jaber worries Israel will again set up a permanent presence in southern Lebanon and that he won't be able to reconstruct the home he built over the last six years for himself, his wife and their two sons.
“When this war ends, we’ll go back,” Ayman says quietly. “We’ll pitch tents if we have to and stay until we rebuild our houses.”