Israel threatens to assassinate Ansarullah leader amid Yemen’s determined pro-Palestinian strikes
The Israeli regime has threatened to assassinate the leader of Yemen’s Ansarullah popular resistance movement, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, should Sana’a persist in its pro-Palestinian missile strikes against sensitive and strategic Israeli targets.
Posting on the X social media platform on Friday, the regime’s minister for military affairs, Israel Katz said if the Yemeni operations continued, “they will suffer painful blows.”
He claimed that Tel Aviv would “also strike the heads of terror,” referring to the regime’s and its allies’ designation of Ansarullah as a “terrorist organization.”
Katz said the regime’s potential assassination of al-Houthi would resemble its assassinations or attempted targeted killing attacks against “Deif and the Sinwars in Gaza.”
The Israeli minister was referring to the former chief of staff of the Gaza Strip-based Palestinian resistance movement Hamas, Mohammed Deif, whose assassination by the regime was announced in January.
Hamas confirmed last October that Yahya Sinwar, the movement’s former Political Bureau chief, had been martyred during attacks by the regime.
Recently, the regime’s media outlets have been trying to lend credibility to allegations that Tel Aviv could have also assassinated Muhammad Sinwar, Yahya’s brother, although this has not been confirmed by any official Hamas’ source.
Katz also said a potential successful targeted killing operation by the regime against al-Houthi would recall Tel Aviv’s assassination of the Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah’s former secretary-general Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, and its assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, who was Hamas’ Political Bureau chief before Yahya Sinwar.
Ansarullah is yet to comment on Katz’s remarks.
Under al-Houthi’s leadership, Yemen has been conducting numerous unyielding strikes against targets across the occupied Palestinian territories since October 2023, when the regime began bringing Gaza under a genocidal war.
The operations have, since their onset, been expanded to include a naval and an aerial blockade against the regime.
The blockades have taken a significant toll on the regime’s economy by turning delivery of commodities to the occupied territories into a considerably more expensive process, and targeting Ben Gurion, the regime’s key airport, on many occasions.
Tel Aviv has been responding by escalating its deadly attacks against Yemen.
Yemen’s Armed Forces have, however, vowed to decisively sustain their strikes as long as the regime keeps up the genocide and a simultaneous intensified siege it has been enforcing against the coastal sliver.
Regional resistance groups have also asserted that Tel Aviv’s assassination of their senior officials only serves to further invigorate their resolve to reinforce their defensive firepower and close their ranks.
