From Yemen to Palestine: One cause, one hope

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Sanaa’s consistent identification of Yemen’s struggle with that of the Palestinians and its widening range of operations opens the possibility of increasingly coordinated operations. 

The Hamas leadership in the Gaza Strip has scrambled in recent days to disavow a recent demonstration in support of the Sanaa government and condemn Saudi Arabia and the United States. Indicating the embattled movement’s widening popular and ideological reach, protesters held aloft images of Sayyid Abdul-Malik al Houthi alongside those of past Palestinian resistance fighters. 

Foremost among the demonstration’s organisers was the Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement, a sometime ally and competitor to Hamas for leadership of the resistance to the Israeli occupation. In a statement issued by Hamas, it said, “The shouts against Arab and Gulf states from our Palestinian arena don’t represent our position and policy.”

This might seem an odd response given the marked similarities between the Yemeni and Palestinian arenas, particularly with respect to Gaza. Both have been effectively sealed off from the outside world by far more powerful and heavily armed belligerents who execute daily attacks against civilian targets which pass almost without comment from the major global powers. 

The glaring similarities were certainly not lost on leading Hamas official Mahmoud al-Zahar who publicly declared his personal support for Ansar Allah’s drone and missile attacks targeting the United Arab Emirates. By stating his belief that the Yemeni people have the right to retaliate against the GCC states, al-Zahar earned himself the attention of Dubai’s deputy police chief, who called for him to be placed on the UAE’s most wanted list.

The Emirati official’s response was understandable, given the implications of the Palestinian and Yemeni causes becoming increasingly aligned with one another. Shortly after the success of last week's attacks on an industrial facility and the airports of Abu Dhabi and Dubai, Amos Yadlin, "Tel Aviv’s" former head of military intelligence suggested that Ansar Allah might soon attack the southern port city of Eilat in the Gulf of Aqaba. Being just short of 2,000km from northern Yemen, as compared with Abu Dhabi at 1400km, the widening scope of Sanaa’s operations suggests that Eilat and presumably other targets will soon be within striking distance.

The only parallel in recent history to such a scenario was during the Persian Gulf War of 1990-1991 when Iraq fired Scud missiles at "Israel" in an attempt to draw "Tel Aviv" into the conflict. Then-Iraqi president Saddam Hussein had correctly calculated that whatever the Arab public may have thought of him, they would not tolerate seeing their own governments and the Israelis fighting on the same side. At American direction, the missile attacks went unanswered. 

If "Tel Aviv" responds openly to any attacks originating from Yemen, this exact above scenario will have come to pass, with perilous implications for the GCC states. 

Houthi leaders have repeatedly identified their struggle not just as one of Yemeni self-determination, but of regional Arab resistance to American-led western domination. While western media coverage repeatedly identifies them as Shi’a, the movement’s religious orientation is explicitly pan-Islamic, eschewing narrow sectarian identities and declaring support for all regional movements opposing US and Israeli objectives, regardless of religious orientation. 

As a growing list of Arab states embraces open relations with "Tel Aviv," groups such as Hamas are increasingly being driven to a moment of truth, where they either accept normalization as the price of financial support from regional countries or forego that support in order to keep faith with their supporters who expect them to continue their resistance.  

If the resistance in Yemen and Palestine becomes one and the same in the Arab consciousness, by implication so will the Gulf States and "Israel." If Yemenis were to engage in the Palestinian theatre against "Israel," there is, in theory, no reason why the armed Palestinian movements could not strike at Riyadh and Abu Dhabi under the same logic. 

If the space from Dubai to "Tel Aviv" becomes the theatre of a single conflict comprising localized fronts in Yemen, Palestine, and Lebanon, the Western-imposed post-Ottoman state structure will come under unprecedented and perhaps insurmountable pressure as any regime openly identified as an enemy of the Palestinian cause will, in the eyes of the Arab Street, have doomed itself.