advance

The rapid Houthi advance down Yemen’s Red Sea coast this week is an astonishing military victory, but not quite the game-changer it is being portrayed as.

The group has been able to threaten the vitally important shipping route, but they have been doing so since 2023. This new victory consolidates that control, proving that Yemen’s government is not currently in a position to defeat them.

The prior Houthi control over the northern section of Yemen’s Red Sea coastline, including the major port city of Hodeidah, has allowed the Iran-allied rebel group, for years, to first attack shipping linked to Israel and the United States – and then, in recent months, Saudi Arabian-linked vessels.

That control also damaged the global economy. Long before the US war with Iran and the transformation of the Strait of Hormuz into a tool to throttle international trade, Houthi attacks around Yemen had turned Bab al-Mandeb into a similar weapon, and led to bombing campaigns against the Houthis by the US, the United Kingdom, and Israel.

Houthi officials themselves have emphasised this, with one leading official, Abdulqader al-Murtada, saying earlier this week that the group did “not need control over Bab al-Mandeb, for the blockade [on Saudi ships] is already in place”. Al-Murtada could point Saudi ships that have avoided Bab al-Mandeb since the Houthis began attacking them in July, even before their latest progress.

However, the Houthi lightning advance makes it even easier for the group to disrupt shipping. They now have access to the Red Sea’s narrow entry point and several islands in it, allowing them to use shorter-range weapons and more easily reach vessels they want to attack and board, as well as potentially using sea mines to further restrict shipping.

Not going away

The increase in the Houthi ability to target shipping – even with the caveats outlined above – does have an impact on market sentiment. Oil prices have increased as traders price in the ability for Iran and its allies to disrupt shipping in Hormuz and Bab al-Mandeb, the two maritime chokepoints of the southern Arabian Peninsula.

However, the consequences of this advance are not limited to the increased ability of the Houthis to attack shipping, but to the increasing reality that the Houthi problem on the Red Sea is not going away.

For months, after Saudi Arabia backed a Yemeni government campaign against southern Yemeni separatist forces earlier this year, the mood had shifted in the country’s anti-Houthi camp.

The perception was that the Yemeni government, led by the Presidential Leadership Council, had finally gotten its act together. President Rashad al-Alimi repeatedly spoke of a unified military chain of command, allowing the military to overcome the divisions blamed for its inability to defeat the Houthis.

Yemeni and Saudi officials had hinted at an anti-Houthi campaign all year. The Red Sea coastline was a possible location: the largely flat geography suited the government, allowing Saudi Arabia to effectively use its air power; much of the population is not made up of the Houthis’ traditional support base; and prior Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping meant that there would likely be international buy-in for such a campaign.

The seizure of the Red Sea coastline has broken all of those narratives.

The momentum the Yemeni government thought it had, even at the start of this week when it claimed advances in al-Jawf, to the east of the Houthi-controlled capital Sanaa, is now gone.

After months of projecting unity, Yemen’s anti-Houthi camp is once again turning on itself, trading accusations of blame for the defeat.

Saudi dilemma

The message the Houthis have for Saudi Arabia is clear: ‘Your partners in Yemen can’t defeat us.’

Therefore, the potential Houthi argument is that Saudi Arabia has to make a deal with them and agree to their terms, including Riyadh funding public sector salaries, access to income from Yemen’s oil and gas reserves, and no restrictions on flights and shipping to Houthi-controlled ports.

The Houthis have an incentive to lock in their gains and raise the cost of escalation before Saudi-backed Yemeni forces can reorganise.

Their attacks on Saudi Arabia, escalating in the past week, have been damaging, and the group is promising more if Riyadh increases its military support for the Yemeni government.

The risk of any such intervention is clearly there for Saudi Arabia. But so is the risk of inaction. The Houthis have repeatedly demanded more concessions when they were in positions of strength.

With the Yemen war unresolved, the Houthis may decide to escalate again in the future, even if a deal is agreed now.

And so, policymakers in Riyadh could determine that it makes more sense to make a concerted effort to deal with the problem head-on now, rather than allow it to fester into the future.

Sept. 3 (UPI) — Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez rejected allegations Thursday that his government had forewarning of the influx of more than 70,000 migrants into the disputed territory of Ceuta, a tiny Spanish enclave on the north African coast.

“It’s absurd to think that the government knew and did nothing,” Sánchez told lawmakers in Parliament in Madrid.

“We have examined all of the messages, statements and verbal reports from the state security apparatus. I can assure you that none of them went any further than a description of the data or routine reporting, and that absolutely none of them predicted the probability or the scale of what ended up occurring,” said Sánchez.

Sánchez’s comments came after tens of thousands of people and opposition parties took to the streets to protest his government’s handling of the July 30-31 border crossing.

The Opposition People’s Party called for Sanchez’ resignation, accusing the government of deception and a whitewash.

The developments followed reports that Spanish officials were advised a ruling by a Spanish court could see the number of arrivals by sea increase because it had been misinterpreted by many migrants as meaning they would permitted to remain in Ceuta if they swam from Morocco.

Saying the government had “nothing to hide,” Sanchez vowed to publish all the information and reports that officials had access to.

All but about 10,000 of the migrants have since returned to Morocco but the matter has snowballed into a serious domestic and diplomatic issue for the government that has impacted ties with Rabat and its EU neighbors amid allegations Morocco, which claims Ceuta as Moroccan, had done nothing to stop the mass crossings and may have encouraged it.

Sánchez said Thursday that he would seek assistance from Brussels, including requesting the EU border agency Frontex to set up a permanent operation in Ceuta and the establishment of a special Europol task force to monitor illegal migration into the enclave.

He said he would also ask for assistance to secure the border of Melilla, another coastal Spanish territory about 180 miles southeast of Ceuta.

Sánchez doubled down of his rejection of those claims, repeating statements made Monday in which he said there was no evidence Morocco was behind the inlflux.

“Lots of people think that the Moroccan authorities provoked this crisis. Up to this point, no one has provided any definitive proof to the government that would allow us to conclude that this mass border crossing… was planned or executed by the Moroccan authorities,” said Sánchez who stressed that the matter was still under investigation.

The crisis strained relations with Italy which temporarily sealed its border with Spain on July 31 and saw Foreign Minister Manuel Albares summon the Italian ambassador after Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani accused Madrid of running a immigration policy that “encourages human trafficking.”

Sánchez responded by noting that Ceuta is not part of Europe’s common travel area, that Italy more allowed illegal migrants to enter than Spain and criticized Spain’s EU partners for offering “very little support” to Madrid.

Israeli forces have raided the Qalandiya Training Centre, operated by the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) in occupied East Jerusalem in what officials and analysts describe as a pivotal step towards dismantling international refugee protections and consolidating control over the occupied West Bank.

Tuesday’s storming of the UNRWA facility, led by far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, was justified by Israeli authorities under October 2024 legislation banning the UN agency, prompting sharp condemnation from Qatar, which warned of systematic efforts to strip millions of Palestinians of essential services.

Strategic annexation

Israeli affairs expert Adel Shadid identified broader territorial ambitions behind the raid, carried out on the boundary line between East Jerusalem and the West Bank. He told Al Jazeera the assault serves a larger geopolitical scheme involving a historic airport close to the training centre.

“The institute is directly adjacent to the historic Qalandiya Airport, which was built more than 106 years ago,” Shadid said.

“The occupation aims to gain complete control over the airport adjacent to the institute to establish a massive settlement comprising over 9,000 settlement units in addition to a Jewish heritage centre and to erase the historical and geographical Jordanian landmarks of the airport,” he explained.

“By controlling these two areas and annexing them to the occupation municipality, the pillars of the ‘Greater Jerusalem’ project are completed. This project alone will carve out between 12 to 13 percent of the total area of the West Bank,” he added.

Shadid noted that this expansion would allow the municipality to control an area exceeding 800sq km (310sq miles), essentially destroying Palestinian continuity.

“The ultimate goal of the occupation exceeds preventing the establishment of a future Palestinian state. Rather, it aims explicitly to prevent the establishment of any independent Palestinian entity or presence on this land,” he said.

Echoing this assessment, retired Lebanese Brigadier General and military analyst Elias Hanna pointed to Israel’s tactical encirclement of urban Palestinian hubs.

“The importance of Qalandiya is linked to the broader settlement project in the West Bank, which is based on creating settlement blocs aiming to control geographical continuity between Palestinian areas and isolate them from each other,” Hanna told Al Jazeera.

“The control over the area can affect the movement and connection between the two cities,” he added, referring to Jerusalem and Ramallah.

Targeting refugee rights

Detailing the immediate impact on UNRWA’s institutional mandate, the agency’s media adviser Adnan Abu Hasna outlined the unprecedented nature of the takeover.

“UNRWA was not informed [in advance] of any action by the Israeli government against the UNRWA institute and complex in Qalandiya,” Abu Hasna told Al Jazeera.

“This measure is unprecedented as the UN flag is lowered and this headquarters is taken over in this unusual manner, and it represents a dangerous escalation against international humanitarian law, against UN laws and against the mandate granted to UNRWA by the UN General Assembly,” he said.

Abu Hasna underscored how the raid violated historic bilateral frameworks that long governed UN operations.

“There is an agreement signed between UNRWA and Israel on June 14, 1967, providing for facilitating UNRWA’s operations and protecting its facilities and its employees and headquarters enjoying immunity and privileges, but unfortunately, all of this has ended now under the weight of escalating Israeli measures,” he said.

The agency operates schools and provides healthcare, social services and microfinancing for Palestinians. Compounding the Israeli raids, destructions of its compounds and offices, and restrictions on its operations, the agency is also facing a financial crisis. Abu Hasna cited major political defunding campaigns, particularly by the United States.

“We have a large deficit, especially after the Trump administration and Republican lawmakers cut $360m, which constitutes about 30 percent of UNRWA’s annual budget,” he noted.

Settler-military cooperation

Regarding the operational dynamics on the ground, Israeli affairs specialist Anas Abu Arqoub highlighted the deepening alignment between state forces and armed settlers.

“It is a division of roles accompanied by a state of complete integration,” Abu Arqoub told Al Jazeera.

“The settler phenomenon … [is] in fact armed organisations with a clear leadership hierarchy, a system of regular and reserve fighters called upon when needed, and they possess a military combat doctrine,” he explained.

“A large part of them are elements from within the Israeli army, armed with its weapons, and undergo joint military training,” he added.

Abu Arqoub said Israeli research institutions, such as the Institute for National Security Studies, have recognised the severe implications of this convergence.

“The Institute for National Security Studies recently pointed out that this military force of settlers has become capable, under the cover of ‘loss of control’, of executing complete ethnic cleansing in the West Bank,” he observed.

US green light

Examining the international impunity enabling these actions, Birzeit University political science Professor Ghassan Khatib emphasised Washington’s decisive role.

“The weakness of the United Nations position is one of the two main factors driving Israel to persist and increasingly rebel against international laws and violate the rights of the Palestinian people,” Khatib told Al Jazeera.

“The first and most important factor is the American position, the actual sponsor of this Israeli rebellion,” he stressed, pointing out a “direct correlation between the rising pace of Israeli violations and the reascent of [President Donald] Trump to the leadership of the United States about two years ago”.

“These settler militias have become an integral part of the occupation system, and the danger will inevitably escalate,” Khatib added.

Electoral basis

From the local community’s perspective, Mohammed Saeed – public relations director for the popular committee of the Qalandiya refugee camp, which Israeli forces also raided on Tuesday – framed the raid as both diplomatic defiance and domestic political posturing.

The Israeli incursion, he said, was a clear message of defiance stating: ‘We are the owners of the land, and we decide its fate,’” Saeed told Al Jazeera on Tuesday.