2024-03-16 16:20:07
Leaders of Hamas and Yemen’s Houthi rebels met recently to discuss “coordinating” their actions against Israel.
According to these sources, the leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, as well as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP, a Marxist organization – note AFP), held an “important meeting” with Houthi leaders “last week”. During this meeting, the location and exact participants of which were not revealed, the leaders discussed “mechanisms for coordinating their resistance actions regarding the next stage” of the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas, BTA reports.
Palestinian factions and the Houthis have also discussed a possible Israeli operation in Rafah, the last major bastion of “Hamas” in the southern part of the Gaza Strip. According to UN data, 1.5 million people have gathered in the city, most of them displaced by the fighting.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu approved the army’s “plans” for the offensive in Rafah, AFP recalls.
During this meeting with the Palestinian factions, the Houthis “confirmed that they will continue their operations in the Red Sea” to “support the Palestinian resistance”, added the sources, who requested anonymity. Both Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the Houthis are part of the “Axis of Resistance,” a group of Iranian-backed movements hostile to Israel and the United States. They include the Lebanese Hezbollah as well as the Iraqi militias.
Since the war between Israel and Hamas, sparked by the Palestinian Islamist movement’s deadly attack on Israeli territory on October 7, the Houthis have stepped up attacks on commercial and sometimes military ships off the coast of Yemen in a sign of “solidarity” with Palestinians in Gaza. recalls AFP. In a speech on Thursday evening, Houthi leader Abdul Malek al-Houthi said his movement would “continue and expand the scope of operations”.
“Our main struggle is to prevent ships associated with the Israeli enemy from passing through the Arabian Sea, the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, but we will also try to prevent them from passing through the Indian Ocean and from South Africa to the Cape of Good Hope.” , he said.