Abdel Bari Atwan: Yemen & Hamas

YEMEN AND THE WAR ON GAZA
How will the US respond to the Houthi challenge to Israeli shipping?

By Abdel Bari Atwan via Rai Al Youm

By intercepting Israeli shipping and engaging US and French naval vessels in the Red Sea, Yemen’s Houthi Ansarullah movement has done more than embarrass the majority of Arab governments and armies that maintain a complicit silence about Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip. Its bold act of solidarity may also hasten the defeat of that aggression and the end of the ban on humanitarian aid from reaching its inhabitants.

Ansarullah and its government in Sanaa have proven to be the staunchest supporters of the resistance in Gaza as it confronts the suffocating US/Israeli war of extermination against more than two million Palestinians. The movement is mounting a maritime blockade of Israel aimed at closing the Bab al-Mandeb Strait linking the Red Sea to the Arabian Sea to all Israeli shipping and all Israel-bound commercial vessels of whatever nationality.

The Yemenis are as good as their word. They are willing to go to war with the US in support of their brothers and sisters in Gaza. Palestine is a sacred cause for them, as shown by the massive demonstrations held in its support in virtually every Yemeni city.

Shortly after Ansarullah military spokesman Yahya Sarie went on TV to announce that all shipping heading for Israeli ports would be targeted, Yemeni forces attacked an Israel-bound oil tanker and launched three drones, which were brought down by a French frigate in the Red Sea.

The US administration has so far failed to react to the spate of attacks, either because it feels confounded or because it fears the consequences that could result from a retaliatory strike against Yemen or Ansarullah forces. It even urged Israel not to carry out its hollow threat to bomb Yemen in response to the detention of an Israeli-owned ship in the port of Hodeida.

Netanyahu officially asked US President Joe Biden and some European leaders to take the “necessary measures” to confront and break this Yemeni naval blockade of Israel. His national security advisor, Tzahi Hanegbi, threatened that Israel would act if the world did not deal with this matter.

The US’ hesitancy is due to its certain knowledge that any aggression against Yemen would immediately trigger drone and missile strikes against US military bases in Saudi Arabia the UAE, Qatar, and Bahrain, where thousands of its personnel are deployed.

Ansarullah’s reply to these threats was brief and to the point: “We are prepared for war. Go ahead.”

Ansarullah stood fast throughout the eight years of war on Yemen, despite the massive disparity in military power. It has tens if not hundreds of thousands of missiles, countless sea mines and fast-attack boats. Sarie’s words were not bluster but backed by a substantial tried and tested military capability.

Israel, coddled by the US and Europe, sees the Yemeni threat to its shipping as a siege, while it has been besieging the Gaza Strip for 17 years, denying its two million inhabitants the most basic of needs and even controlling the calories of the food they’re allowed: 2,000 per woman and 2,200 per man per day.

The Saudi authorities were right to advise Washington to show restraint and not react hastily when an Israeli-owned ship was impounded and taken to the Yemeni coast. They know that any military retaliation would be counterproductive. As well as unleashing attacks on US bases, it would shatter the ceasefire between Riyadh and Sanaa, plunging the region into chaos and instability, turning the Red Sea into a warzone, and causing a global energy crisis (four million barrels of oil bound for Western consumers transit Bab al-Mandeb every day).

The US is currently trying to get its clients in the region to do two things: put Ansarullah back on their ‘terrorist’ list; and a form a maritime protection force in the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea to confront any attempt to close the strait.

We don’t know whether it will achieve either of those goals. But we do know it would be blundering into what it has long warned against: the expansion of the war on Gaza into a regional war on multiple fronts — a war in which the US would be the biggest loser.

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THE REVIVAL OF THE ‘TWO-STATE SOLUTION’
It’s impossible to take US talk of future peace plans seriously

By Abdel Bari Atwan via Rai Al Youm

Lord Almighty! Everyone’s talking about the ‘two-state solution’ again!

It has become the top item in countless political statements, endeavours, conferences, and meetings involving the US, Europe, and Arab capitals. It’s as though gravity has suddenly been re-discovered, and found to be the force that might save Israel — and US and Western interests in the Middle East — from impending collapse. Calls have been issued far and wide for an international conference — including regional powers such as Saudi Arabia and Iran and global players like China and Russia — to be held under US auspices to relaunch the two-state solution as the only way out of the current wars and crises.

The party that caused this massive change in political attitudes and made the Palestinian cause the focus of international attention after 30 years of neglect and disdain is the Palestinian resistance led by Hamas. Yet it is not to be invited to any of these conferences. That alone shows that a conspiracy is afoot to steal its victory that is becoming apparent among the ruins of the Gaza Strip, just as the first and second intifadas were stolen.

The phoney spat between the ultra-Zionist president of the US Joe Biden and Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a big part of this conspiracy, if not its mainstay. It is eyewash intended to give the impression that a change is underway in the US position reflecting greater understanding of the suffering of the Palestinian people at the hands of the occupation and its colonialist policies.

Biden — whose administration has been airlifting vast quantities of advanced weapons, shells, and missiles to the Israeli army — is a full partner in the war of extermination it launched 70 days ago that has so far killed 20,000 people, injured 50,000 and displaced two million after destroying their homes. It is Biden, the new prophet of peace, who used his UN veto a few days to oppose an immediate ceasefire and gave the Israeli army four more weeks to continue its slaughter before considering any international intervention to stop the war. It is therefore impossible to trust him or take seriously any of his talk of a peaceful solution.

The Palestinian resistance groups that have been valiantly resisting the assault and inflicting heavy casualties on the invaders will never agree to being excluded from any conference to discuss their and their families’ future, or to any solutions that fall short of realising their legitimate demand for the liberation of all occupied territories from the river to the sea.

Just as the resistance and the Palestinian people as a whole do not trust the US and the Western world in general, they do not trust most of the Arab governments and go-betweens, especially the normalisers (whether over or under the table). They have been colluding on orders from Washington and Tel Aviv, and can barely conceal their concern at the failure of the occupier state to wipe out the resistance and bring the Gaza Strip back under its control.

The reason Hamas has been able to fight this war so skilfully, bring the Palestinian cause back to the forefront, beat the invincible IDF, and score so many military successes, is that it never trusted or relied on any Arab regime. Its leaders are not imploring them for help. They live in underground tunnels and eat the same food as their impoverished compatriots. Yahya Sinwar has never flown in an aeroplane, and has only left Gaza twice for meetings in Cairo.

The US and some of its European allies and Arab collaborators managed to steal the armed intifada that broke out in 2000. They took advantage of the gullibility of PLO leaders, including president Mahmoud Abbas and his aides, to sell them the illusion of a two-state solution. A Quartet was formed and Roadmap drawn up to achieve this aim and a Palestinian state was promised within the year. It was the biggest act of political anaesthesia in modern history. Once the intifada was quelled, everything was abandoned, and the PLO was plunged yet again into futile negotiations. It was turned into a guard for the settlers and a spy agency to prevent a new intifada, and its leaders were inundated with money and privileges.

Having been bitten time and again by the viper of American ‘peace’, we must be extremely wary of being bitten again under the guise of renewed talks on a two-state solution. The intention is to save the Israeli state and the Zionist enterprise from disintegration, and use the decomposing corpse of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and its corrupt fat-cats to resume their former role and negotiate on behalf of the Palestinian people.

The Ramallah-based PA and its president do not represent the Palestinian people. Hamas’ representatives are those who fought on their behalf, beat and humiliated the Israeli invaders, and rescued the Gaza Strip from their occupation and their transfer and ethnic cleansing plans. They must be represented in future by those who raided the military bases and liberated most of the settlements in the Gaza Envelope and dealt the occupation its biggest defeat for 75 years.

When a vast majority of UN members vote in support of the Palestinian people and an immediate cease-fire, and are only opposed by the US, Israel, and a handful of other states — mostly minnows that rely on US handouts — we can be sure that a new stage has begun. The beginning of the end for the US and the occupier state.