Yemen’s Houthi rebels have signaled they’ve stopped their attacks against Israel and shipping in the Red Sea as a shaky ceasefire holds in the Gaza Strip.
In an undated letter to Hamas’s Qassam Brigades published online by the terror group, the Houthis offered their clearest signal that their attacks have halted.
“We are closely monitoring developments and declare that if the enemy resumes its aggression against Gaza, we will return to our military operations deep inside the Zionist entity, and we will reinstate the ban on Israeli navigation in the Red and Arabian Seas,” the letter from Maj. Gen. Yusuf Hassan al-Madani, the Houthi military’s chief of staff, read.
The Houthis have not offered any formal acknowledgment that their campaign in the region has halted. Israel’s military, which has launched attacks in response killing senior Houthi leaders, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Houthis — whose slogan calls for “Death to America, Death to Israel, [and] a Curse on the Jews” — began attacking Israel and maritime traffic in November 2023, a month after the October 7 Hamas massacre, which sparked the Gaza war.
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They targeted Israel with over 130 ballistic missiles and dozens of cruise missiles and drones, including one that killed a civilian and wounded several others in Tel Aviv in July 2024, prompting Israel’s first strike in Yemen. Dozens of people have been injured in other Houthi attacks.
Israel has attacked the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen, located some 1,800 kilometers (1,100 miles) away, 19 times.
Since a ceasefire in the Gaza war began on October 10, no attacks have been claimed by the rebel group. The last Houthi missile attack on Israel was apparently on October 5, and the last drone attack on October 7.
Workers walk through the rubble of a destroyed school building in Ramat Gan, near Tel Aviv, on December 19, 2024, after the campus was hit by a Houthi missile fired from Yemen. (Jack Guez / AFP)
The ceasefire in Gaza, which at times looked like it was ready to unravel amid Hamas attacks on the IDF and Israeli responses, has been held together under US pressure.
The Houthi campaign against shipping has killed at least nine mariners and seen four ships sunk. It upended shipping in the Red Sea, through which about $1 trillion of goods passed each year before the war. The rebels’ most recent maritime attack hit the Dutch-flagged cargo ship Minervagracht on September 29, killing one crew member on board and wounding another.
While insisting its campaign targeted Israel-affiliated vessels, the ships attacked at the time had limited — if any — relationship to the Israel-Hamas war.
The US launched an intense bombing campaign targeting the rebels earlier this year that US President Donald Trump halted just before his trip to the Mideast. The Biden administration also conducted strikes against the Houthis, including using America’s B-2 bombers to target what it described as underground bunkers used by the Houthis.
Meanwhile, the Houthis have increasingly threatened Saudi Arabia and taken dozens of workers at UN agencies and other aid groups as prisoners, alleging without evidence that they were spies — something fiercely denied by the UN and others.
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