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Head of PLC to Discuss with Grundberg Houthi Rejection to Open Taiz Crossings

President of the Yemeni Presidential Leadership Council Rashad al-Alimi (Saba News Agency)
President of the Yemeni Presidential Leadership Council Rashad al-Alimi (Saba News Agency)
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Head of PLC to Discuss with Grundberg Houthi Rejection to Open Taiz Crossings

President of the Yemeni Presidential Leadership Council Rashad al-Alimi (Saba News Agency)
President of the Yemeni Presidential Leadership Council Rashad al-Alimi (Saba News Agency)

The UN envoy to Yemen, Hans Grundberg, will meet in Riyadh Monday with the Chairman of the Presidential Leadership Council (PLC) in Yemen Rashad al-Alimi to discuss the Houthi militias' refusal to open the Taiz crossings, according to well-informed sources.

The sources revealed that the government team concerned with opening the crossings briefed the President and members of the Council on the Houthis' negative response and refusal to open the roads following the terms of the UN-sponsored truce announced last April.

The Houthis rejected the proposal presented by the UN envoy to reopen three roads they suggested, one proposed by the government and another between the governorates of Dhale and Ibb.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, the sources added that the government delegation informed the Yemeni presidency about the issue, and clarified the team's opinion of the Houthis' response.

Meanwhile, the militias continue to violate the UN truce on various fronts, according to a statement issued by the Yemeni army last week.

The report indicated that the Iranian-backed Houthi militia committed 115 violations of the UN truce on the fronts of Hodeidah, Taiz, Ad-Dhalea, Hajjah, al-Jawf, and Marib.

It asserted that the army continued to adhere to the ceasefire following the directives of the political and military leadership.

According to the Yemeni army, the government forces thwarted a Houthi attempt to infiltrate armed groups towards military sites northwest of Marib, forcing them to retreat.

The Houthis also attacked army positions with artillery, various calibers, and booby-trapped drones, killing two soldiers and injuring seven others.

The Yemeni army accused the militias of deploying drones and transporting human reinforcements and combat equipment to various fronts, including west of Marib and some in the Taiz axis.

Army spokesman, Brigadier General Abdo Majali, said the group committed more than 1,700 field violations in 23 days.

Furthermore, the Speaker of the Arab Parliament, Adel al-Asoomi, renewed his warnings of the imminent catastrophic risks of the leakage, sinking, or explosion of the Safer oil tanker.

Asoomi said the Houthis are responsible for any environmental, humanitarian, and economic disaster resulting from the tanker's oil spill due to the militia's intransigence and refusal to allow a UN team to board it.

The Speaker stressed the need for immediate and urgent international action to pressure the militia to stop its manipulation of the issue and using the tanker for political blackmail.

He asserted that the UN team should be allowed to board the tanker, assess its technical situation, and unload the oil.

Asoomi warned that Safer had become a real threat to international shipping, urging the UN to take the necessary measures to prevent oil leakage and transfer it to a safe place.

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Arab World

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.”