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President Trump has now made his separate peace with the Houthis, without alerting the Israelis of his plans, and as a result, he has caused some consternation in Jerusalem, but Israeli policymakers have wisely kept mum. Trump wanted a done deal before the Israelis could rouse their supporters in the US to try to talk him out of it. Here’s the deal: the Houthis will no longer strike international shipping, and in return, Trump promises to cease bombing Houthis in Yemen. Israeli shipping, and Israel itself, are not part of the deal; they will remain targets of the Houthis, who just the other day sent a missile that managed to hit Ben-Gurion Airport.
The Israelis are now determined to fight on alone, until the Houthis cry uncle and promise to stop launching missiles and drones at Israel. In the last two days, they accomplished much, including what appears to be the wholesale destruction of the port at Hodeidah and the international airport in Sana’a, as well as a cement factory that supplied the Houthis with material for building their tunnel network, where they hide both themselves and their weapons, and other military infrastructure. In addition, the IDF hit several electric power stations. More on Israel’s latest attacks can be found here: “IDF strikes shut down Sanaa International airport,” by Yonah Jeremy Bob, Amichai Stein, and James Genn, Jerusalem Post, May
The IDF said on Tuesday that it had conducted a wide array of airstrikes across Yemen, targeting Sanaa International Airport, electric power stations, and a cement factory to weaken the Houthis.
The military confirmed that one of the locations struck was al-Imran cement factory north of Sanaa.
It added that al-Imran “serves as a significant resource for the Houthi terrorist regime and is used for the construction of underground tunnels and other terrorist infrastructure.”
Dozens of aircraft were involved once again in the strikes, the IDF shared, dropping over 50 munitions, as the air force did on Monday and on January 11.
The attack was not only coordinated with the US, but Washington has been attacking the Houthis on a nearly daily basis at almost the same time.
The IDF also struck Attan in south-west Sanaa, Haiz Central Power Station in the Sanhan district south-east of the capital, and Asr Electricity Station in Sanaa’s Ma’een district to the west of the city, according to Al Masirah.
The Houthis’ official news agency, SABA, also said that the IDF struck at least two electricity transformers.
The international airport is located north of the city.
The attacks followed the military’s 2:36 p.m. warning to all Yemeni citizens at the airport to evacuate.
The warning is the first time that Israel has shared an alert before attacking the Houthis, after six prior attacks without warning, including on Monday.
Defense sources explained that, in this instance, the nature of an international airport, as opposed to Yemen’s Hodeidah Port and other areas that Israel has attacked, demanded a different level of warning….
The international airport was likely to be full of civilians, including many non-Houthis in transit. It was felt necessary, then, to warn them of the impending attack, as would not be needed for attacks on the Hodeidah port, or electric power stations, or a cement plant.
On Monday [May 5], the air force undertook a joint counterstrike of the Houthis in Yemen along with the US following the ballistic missile strike near Ben-Gurion Airport on Sunday….
This was the last strike that the USAF undertook. After this joint strike, the Houthis quickly decided to make a deal with the Americans, to peel them off from their Israeli allies by offering an end to all strikes on international shipping — that Trump had repeatedly declared to be his main interest in bombing the Houthis — in return for a cessation of American attacks on Yemen.
Now Israel will be on its own in dealing with the Houthis, its American ally apparently unwilling to continue fighting the Houthis after 1000 airstrikes. If the Houthis think things will ease up, they are quite wrong. They do not understand the mental makeup of the Israelis. Now, alone — and because it is alone — the IDF will now let loose with even more devastating airstrikes than before, to compensate for the loss of American attacks, and will keep pounding the Houthis until their store of rockets, missiles, and drones have been either destroyed or used up in futile attacks on Israel.
It will be another example of that ferocious Israeli will to live and to prevail that the British showed in 1940 in that famous cartoon of David Low, at a time when the Battle of Britain was being fought in the skies over London, showing a soldier holding his rifle in his right hand while raising his left arm in defiance to the sky, at a time when the Nazis had overrun most of Europe, with a caption that read “Very well, alone.”
It’s a SHAME that the US backed out, but hey, they’re following their own interests.
It will be interesting to see if the Iranians will rush to sign a deal too leaving the Israelis to finish the job alone.
This, however, will not be the end of the story: the rest of the world, led by the EU will turn on Israel in their fury and yet again, the US will have the opportunity to leave Israel to deal with the problem on its own.
The only unknown in this case is Leo XIV, who may even push to finally solve the Jewish problem, not openly, of course, but behind closed doors.
Stay tuned!