This is a simple and revealing truth that requires neither proof nor elaboration: the steadfast city of Taiz has exposed the reality of the Houthi terrorist militia, which cynically exploits the Palestinian tragedy while subjecting Yemenis to killing and starvation.
Those who deny their fellow citizens food and medicine, and threaten their water supplies and the lives of their sick, expose through their criminal conduct the falsehood of their slogans. The Houthis have turned Palestine into a cover for their crimes and Gaza into a pretext for expanding their influence and justifying their weapons.
But profiting from Palestinian blood will never cleanse their crimes against the people of Yemen, nor should it serve as an excuse for remaining silent about them.
This propaganda collapses in the face of the reality of besieged Taiz, where the essentials of life are breaking down. On October 20, the United Nations warned that the healthcare system was nearing collapse and that fuel shortages were threatening medical oxygen supplies, calling on the Houthis to open a safe humanitarian corridor.
Yet the disaster has failed to provoke a response commensurate with its gravity. This reflects a deeper structural flaw in the mindset of politicized masses, rooted in Arab political culture, which can be described as a “camp mentality.”
Conscience is awakened when the perpetrator is an external enemy, but replaced by silence, and sometimes even justification, when the crime is committed by a militia or organization that raises ideological slogans appealing to popular emotions.
In reality, the targeting of Taiz goes beyond revenge against a city that has refused to submit. It strikes at a cultural and symbolic pillar of Yemen's political identity, to the point that Taiz can be regarded as the identity capital of modern Yemen. It served as the capital of the Rasulid State and later became the seat of power for Imam Ahmad after the events of 1948 until the establishment of the republic in 1962.
The transfer of government authority there revealed its importance in balancing Yemen's competing centers of influence. Through its connection with Aden, Taiz consolidated its place as a center of commerce, education, and modern political activity. Ahmad Muhammad Noman emerged as one of the leading figures of the national movement, and the city's sons carried the banner of statehood and the republican project.
The assassination of Abdul Raqib Abdul Wahab in the aftermath of the republican conflict of 1968 revealed the limits of traditional power centers' willingness to share authority with the emerging elite from Taiz.
During the rule of Ali Abdullah Saleh, Taiz continued to oscillate between its central role in administration and the economy and its limited influence within political and military decision-making circles.
After Yemeni unification, the city became the birthplace of cost-of-living protests in 1992, before emerging as one of the principal centers of the 2011 protest movement during the wave known as the “Arab Spring.”
Geography, a factor often overlooked in interpreting history and political change, has given Taiz additional significance. Its highlands connect Yemen's interior to the Red Sea coast, while its roads extend southward toward Aden and westward toward Mokha, forming a land corridor leading to Bab el-Mandeb.
From a geopolitical perspective, Taiz can be described as a “strategic hinge city” because of its ability to connect or separate battlefronts and influence the balance of power. Securing control of the coast is linked to controlling the highlands and access routes, while any advance toward southern Yemen inevitably encounters this geographic and military chokepoint.
These realities place Taiz at a decisive position in Yemen's war. The continuation of its siege grants the militia advantages that extend beyond merely surrounding the city. It forces government-aligned forces to devote resources to defending access routes and protecting positions, reducing their ability to take the initiative.
The Houthis thus use pressure on Taiz to ease pressure on their positions elsewhere, turning the siege into a tool of war management, at a tremendous humanitarian cost borne by the city's residents and affecting a governorate with a population exceeding four million people.
Taiz also represents a test of the ability of Yemenis to unify military and political decision-making. Forces opposed to the militia possess extensive human and military resources, but their effectiveness depends on overcoming fragmentation and transforming those resources into coordinated action.
Lifting the siege and securing links between the city, Aden, and the coast would expand the options available to the legitimate government and reduce the Houthis' ability to isolate and wear down one front after another.
In this sense, breaking the siege of Taiz becomes a gateway to breaking the militia's grip and restoring the state. It is difficult to imagine lasting stability in Yemen while this vital national hub remains under siege and subject to coercion.
The siege of Taiz is a crime against Yemen and its people. The militia has compounded that crime by targeting and attacking the Land of the Two Holy Mosques and by provoking more than 1.5 billion Muslims who turn toward Makkah, may God honor it, five times a day in prayer.
This has exposed the falsehood of the Houthis' claims of supporting Gaza and laid bare, before the eyes of the world, their use of extortion and coercion to impose influence.
The blood of Yemenis cannot be erased by the “scream,” and the crimes of the militia cannot be washed away by slogans, even if it invokes the name of Palestine a thousand times.
