Yemen: Aerial blockade on Israel will trigger ‘reverse migration’ from occupied territories
A senior member of Ansarullah’s political bureau says retaliatory strikes by Yemeni armed forces and their planned comprehensive aerial blockade on Israel will soon trigger reverse migration of thousands of settlers from the occupied territories.
In an interview with the Palestinian Shehab News Agency, Hazam al-Assad said “the surprises coming from Yemen will astonish everyone, both near and far.”
He said the strikes by the Yemeni forces were “capable of reversing the tide of migration from the occupied territories.”
“Upcoming events, God willing, will set the wheel of migration back from the occupied Palestinian territories unless the US-backed Zionist entity halts its aggression and lifts its siege on our people in Gaza,” Assad was quoted as saying.
Tens of thousands of Israeli settlers have already left the occupied Palestinian territories since the onset of intense retaliatory strikes by regional resistance groups in response to the Israeli regime’s multi-pronged wars across the West Asia region.
The settlers broke the record of reverse migration in 2024, with an unprecedented 82,700 of them fleeing the territories.
Assad said the decision to impose an air blockade on Israel “was not a joke or a media stunt,” calling on skeptics to monitor the fate of the port of Eilat following the naval blockade imposed by the Yemeni forces on ports across the occupied territories.
Elsewhere in his remarks, Assad said “Ben Gurion Airport and other Israeli airports will be like Umm al-Rashrash Port,” known by the Israeli occupying regime as “Eilat.”
The official made it clear that Israeli threats against Yemen will not deter it from continuing its role in supporting and assisting Palestinians in Gaza.
The Yemeni forces said late on Sunday they would impose a “comprehensive” aerial blockade on Israel by repeatedly targeting its airports, in response to Israel expanding its brutal military campaign in Gaza.
They also claimed responsibility for a missile strike on Sunday that hit near Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport, the latest in a string of attacks, saying they are acting in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.
Yemen’s Humanitarian Operations Coordination Center in a statement called “upon all international airlines to take this announcement into serious consideration … and to cancel all their flights to the airports of the criminal Israeli enemy, in order to safeguard the safety of their aircraft and passengers,” the statement read.
The Yemeni forces have increasingly targeted Israel and its ships in the Red Sea, stating that their actions are acts of solidarity with Palestinians as Israel continues its atrocities in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
Israel has killed more than 52,500 people in Gaza since October 2023, according to the Gaza health ministry.
