After deadly Tel Aviv attack, restraint against Houthis was no longer deemed an option
Security chiefs were hoping a hostage deal might deescalate war, including in the north. After Friday’s attack, and Israel’s inevitable response, they’re bracing for wider conflict
David Horovitz is the founding editor of The Times of Israel. He is the author of "Still Life with Bombers" (2004) and "A Little Too Close to God" (2000), and co-author of "Shalom Friend: The Life and Legacy of Yitzhak Rabin" (1996). He previously edited The Jerusalem Post (2004-2011) and The Jerusalem Report (1998-2004).
Yemen’s Houthi rebels, another of Iran’s terror proxies avowedly seeking to destroy Israel, have been targeting the country since soon after Hamas’s October 7 invasion and slaughter. And Israel had elected not to strike back, even after a missile scored a direct hit on Eilat in March.
But in the early hours of Friday morning, an apparently upgraded Houthi drone evaded Israel’s defenses — for reasons thus far ascribed by the IDF to “human error” — and exploded in Tel Aviv, striking an apartment bloc and killing a 50-year-old Israeli, Yevgeny Ferder. The Houthis declared that this marked a “new phase” in their operations against Israel.
At this point, Israeli security chiefs are reported to have told cabinet ministers who gathered in an emergency session on Shabbat afternoon, restraint was no longer an option.
Israel’s air force had therefore just targeted the Red Sea port of Hodeida, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the nation in a recorded video statement after Shabbat had ended, because it was the entry point for Iranian weaponry used by the Houthis against Israel and other Iranian enemies in the region. The US-led coalition trying to thwart Houthi attacks on international shipping in the Red Sea has not operated against the port in western Yemen, in part at least because it is also used for civilian purposes.
Hitting facilities over 1,800 kilometers (1,100 miles) away, the strike was among the most complicated ever carried out by Israel, the IDF Spokesman Daniel Hagari said.
Israel plainly recognizes the potential for its unprecedented direct retaliation against the Houthis to trigger still further escalation. It informed the United States ahead of Saturday’s strike, and is understood to have given advance warning to others in the region as well.
Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara is reported to have insisted that the ministers in the security cabinet gather, even on Shabbat, to formally approve the operation, since she deemed that forum’s support legally essential given the potential for wider consequent conflict.
Israeli military chiefs have said privately in recent months that one of the problems of grappling with the Houthis is that they do not appear to be particularly susceptible to deterrence. Indeed, following Saturday’s Israeli strike, a senior Houthi leader vowed that Israel would “pay the price” and that “we will meet escalation with escalation.”
As of Saturday night, nonetheless, the IDF said it was issuing no new security instructions to the public.
And Netanyahu was still planning to go ahead with his trip this week to the United States — where he will meet Joe Biden, provided the president has recovered from COVID-19, hopes to meet Republican presidential nominee and former president Donald Trump, and will address a joint session of Congress.
Among his themes in that address, Netanyahu was already expected to highlight the Iranian regime’s intensifying efforts to destroy Israel, its rapacious ambitions for the entire region, and its apparently accelerating nuclear weapons drive.
Three months after the ayatollahs’ unprecedented direct missile and drone assault on Israel was almost completely thwarted by Israel and a US-led coalition, the weekend’s events will give that message still greater resonance and urgency. “Anyone who wishes to see a stable and safe Middle East,” Netanyahu declared on Saturday night, “needs to stand against Iran’s axis of evil, and support Israel’s fight against Iran and its proxies – in Yemen, in Gaza, in Lebanon, everywhere.”
As he spoke, demonstrators in Tel Aviv and elsewhere, including relatives of the 116 hostages held by Hamas in Gaza since the October 7 attack, were urging him not to make the trip to the US — or at least not until he has finalized a hostage-ceasefire deal that, they believe, could also deescalate the entire conflict, notably across Israel’s northern border, where a third Iranian proxy Hezbollah has been firing dozens of rockets into Israel daily.
The heads of Israel’s security establishment, and Netanyahu’s own Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, are understood to widely share this assessment, and to have been urging the prime minister to do his utmost to get the deal done. As of Saturday night, however, they were also bracing for nine months of war to widen.
