On Tuesday, the Houthi government in Sanaa, Yemen, announced that it had fired drones and missiles toward Israel in support of the Palestinian cause and would continue to do so. At least one missile entered Saudi airspace, placing the kingdom’s air defenses on alert.
“Our Armed Forces launched a large batch of ballistic and cruise missiles and a large number of drones at various targets of the Israeli enemy in the occupied territories,” declared Brigadier General Yahya Saree, the spokesman for the Yemeni Armed Forces.
Tuesday’s launch was “the third operation in support of our oppressed brethren in Palestine,” Saree said, adding that the Houthi military “will continue to carry out more qualitative strikes with missiles and drones until the Israeli aggression stops.”
Yemen conducted the campaign “out of a sense of religious, moral, humanitarian and national responsibility, and in response to the demands of our Yemeni people and the demands of free peoples, and to provide relief to our oppressed people in Gaza,” the spokesman claimed.
“The position of our Yemeni people towards the Palestinian issue is firm and principled, and that the Palestinian people have the full right to self-defense in pursuit of their full legitimate rights,” Saree elaborated.
The Israeli military has recently mobilized ground troops to Gaza, after weeks of artillery and air strikes against the terrorist group Hamas.
While the aftermath of Tuesday’s missile and drone strikes remains uncertain, at least one missile crashed in the deserts of Jordan. No damage or casualties have been reported thus far.
Nevertheless, the Yemeni missiles flew over Saudi Arabia for the first time, prompting the kingdom to keep its air defenses on alert. Since 2015, Saudi Arabia has been fighting the Houthis, blasting the Shia community for being Iranian proxies. Yet this spring saw both sides appear keen on reconciliation, following a Chinese-mediated deal between Riyadh and Tehran.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Navy alleged its ships had downed various missiles and drones launched at Israel over the Red Sea. Notably, the Pentagon did not directly accuse Yemen of launching these missiles.
On November 1, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) claimed it killed another key Hamas figure in an airstrike targeting the densely populated Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza, the largest in the enclave.
The IDF said that a fighter jet pounded a Hamas complex in the camp “based on precise intelligence,” killing the Palestinian militant group’s main anti-tank missile unit commander, Muhammad A’sar. This bombing came hours after an initial strike, which Israel said killed Ibrahim Biari, who it maintained was a key figure in staging the recent October 7 attack by Hamas.
“Hamas deliberately builds its terror infrastructure under, around, and within civilian buildings, intentionally endangering Gazan civilians,” Israel announced in a statement. Although Gazan authorities have not provided an updated list of casualty figures from Israel’s latest strike, Dr. Atef Al Kahlout, director of Gaza’s Indonesian hospital, told the CNN news outlet that at least 80 people were killed.
Palestinian health officials said that Israeli bombing killed about 50 people and wounded 150 more. On its end, Hamas has refuted allegations that any of its leaders were at the Jabalia camp.
Rescue workers looked for survivors in the rubble after the bombing, which left a deep crater and devastated buildings in the Falluja neighborhood of the camp, CNN reported.
These airstrikes “could amount to war crimes,” the UN Human Rights Commission posted on X November 1.
“Given the high number of civilian casualties & the scale of destruction following Israeli airstrikes on Jabalia refugee camp,” the UN office declared, “we have serious concerns that these are disproportionate attacks that could amount to war crimes.”
Israel’s bombings of the blockaded coastal enclave of Gaza in retaliation for Hamas’ October 7 attack have so far claimed the lives of at least 9,000 people, the local health ministry claimed. Women, children, and the elderly comprise around 70 percent of those killed, the ministry stated on October 30.
Various countries have slammed Israel’s sustained bombardment of Gaza, and the Jabalia camp in particular, with Jordan on Wednesday recalling its ambassador from Israel following like-minded moves by Chile and Colombia. Also, Bolivia has severed diplomatic relations with Israel on the grounds that Israel has perpetuated “crimes against humanity.”
On November 1, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Martin Griffiths urged for both sides to abide by international humanitarian law following a two-day visit to Israel and the Palestinian territory. The director of the UN’s human rights office, Craig Mokhiber, submitted his resignation on October 31 over what he claimed was the UN’s “failure” to forestall a “textbook case of genocide” in Gaza.
Moreover, on October 30, The New York Times reported that the Israeli government was willing to kill many civilians to defeat Hamas in Gaza, revealing this willingness to its U.S. partners in “private conversations.”
The Times reported that the Biden administration continues to back Israel, but has become “more critical” of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s reaction to Hamas owing to the “humanitarian crisis in Gaza.”
“It became evident to US officials that Israeli leaders believed mass civilian casualties were an acceptable price in the military campaign,” the Times article indicated, elaborating that Israeli officials brought up the “devastating bombings” that the United States had used against Germany and Japan during the Second World War, including the use of atomic weapons against Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The Times article disclosed how the Biden administration initially thought it could obtain support for Israel just as it had for Ukraine owing to the brutality of Hamas’ atrocities on October 7, but soon found that such support would be “impossible.”
“If anything, countries around the world, especially developing nations, are moving the other way as the Palestinian death toll grows. Even European allies of the United States are divided on Israel’s war,” the Times continued.
U.S. officials contend that Netanyahu has “no plans for what to do with Gaza” after Israel Defense Forces ground troops take “some or all of it.”
In response to the Times article, lawyer and activist Steven Donziger posted on Instagram, “This might help explain the massive scale of civilian and child death currently taking place in Gaza. This mentality also might explain why Israel just dropped a huge bomb on the densely populated Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza and why it appears to be targeting civilians.”
MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan singled out the Times article on November 1, characterizing the paragraph as “almost buried” in the middle of the piece.
Recently, The Wall Street Journal published an article detailing how the Pentagon reportedly asked Israel to postpone its planned ground invasion of Gaza to supposedly buy time for the United States to send air defenses to Iraq and Syria and make way for talks to liberate some of the estimated 200 hostages held captive by Hamas.
Israel’s ground invasion of Gaza began on October 27, with a total communications blackout of the Palestinian enclave. On November 1, the IDF divulged that 15 of its soldiers have been killed so far in its ongoing operations.
