Understanding Yemen’s Unwavering Solidarity with Gaza

Since the beginning of Israel’s campaign of ethnic cleansing in Gaza, the nation of Yemen, which has no strategic borders with occupied Palestine, but has also endured famine and brutal military intervention, has responded with unwavering solidarity. Through its blockade of the Red Sea, Yemen demonstrated a willingness to create a point of no return for Israel should it continue with its extermination campaign in Gaza: either they cease their attacks, or Israel will face an escalating pressure campaign that began with the blockade of merchant ships, preventing vessels from crossing the Red Sea and reaching ports in occupied Palestine. At least 12 shipping companies, including the giant Mediterranean Shipping Company, have suspended travel through the Red Sea as a result of Yemen’s blockade.

Yahya Saree, Yemeni military officer and spokesman for Yemen’s Armed Forces, declared in a speech that “Gaza is our red line. There are no [other] red lines before the Yemeni people,” Saree announced. “We will strike and target things the enemy has never thought of, things that the enemy cannot imagine, and even the Yemeni people and the people of the world cannot imagine.”

To understand the meaning behind Yemen’s military actions in solidarity with Gaza, one must examine, at the very least, Saudi Arabia’s blockade—by land, sea, and air—of Yemen in 2015 and the subsequent humanitarian disaster that engulfed the nation, which was directly supported by the United States and the United Kingdom. The war waged upon the people of Yemen, which has resulted in some 500,000 deaths, a historic wave of cholera, and the malnourishment of millions of children, would not have been possible were it not for arms sales, intelligence, and military assistance provided to the Saudi coalition by the United States and the United Kingdom; in 2017, “the number of British made bombs sold to Saudi Arabia…[rose] by almost 500 percent.”

Airstrikes against Yemen decimated educational institutions—resulting in more than 2,500 schools being left “out of use”—and they targeted hospitals, medical clinics, and water infrastructure too. Despite its mounting war crimes, the United States provided Saudi Arabia with $355 million in large arms between 2015 and 2018. In 2022, just two months after committing to ending the United States’ support of the war on Yemen, the Biden administration approved a continuation of “maintenance support” for Saudi Arabia’s violent campaign: a $500 million contract to fund an aircraft fleet and a $650 million contract for air-to-air missiles. Despite all that Yemen has endured in the last decade, the solidarity with Gaza from AnsarAllah, which leads what has been described as Yemen’s armed vanguard and is also known as the Houthis, was swift and has not wavered as Israel’s genocide of Palestine wages on.

In a conversation with Splinter, Shireen Al-Adeimi, a Yemeni-American assistant professor at Michigan State University and a non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute, emphasized that the war on Yemen “is not fully over yet,” and that parts of Yemen remain under a de facto occupation by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. “This has led to economic and security downfalls, as well as theft of Yemen’s natural resources. The U.S./Saudi coalition also still limits Yemen’s ability to control its airspace, as Sana’a airport remains open to travel to and from Amman, Jordan only. Additionally, there is still a widespread need for humanitarian assistance.”

Al-Adeimi, who was born and raised in Aden, Yemen, argues that despite the challenges Yemenis face, the areas in the north, which are governed by AnsarAllah, have witnessed efforts to make Yemen more self-reliant, including the growth of its agricultural sector. “We’ve also seen an end to indiscriminate airstrikes by the Saudi-U.S. coalition, and an easing of the tightly-controlled blockade on Yemen’s ports,” she said. “That said, the country and its people are still reeling from a decade of economic, health, educational, and other declines due to the war of aggression that tried, but failed, to impose regional and western policies and their chosen puppets onto the Yemeni people.”

Yemen’s support of Gaza has not come without a price, argues Al-Adeimi, including a permanent peace agreement with Saudi Arabia, which would bring an end to Saudi control over Yemen. “It’s difficult for people to understand why Yemen would choose to support Gaza unless they’re Yemeni and understand Yemeni history, culture, and politics,” says Al-Adeimi. “The issue of Palestinian solidarity has been a uniting factor among Yemenis, no matter their political disposition.”

She added that Yemenis see such solidarity reflected throughout their political history dating back to the 1940s. The actions of AnsarAllah, namely their airstrikes on parts of occupied Palestine, have resulted in renewed airstrikes on Yemen, including the port of Hodeidah, which serves as a lifeline for humanitarian aid. Al-Adeimi argues that Israeli and U.S. attacks “are setbacks for any nation, especially one that has been suffering from a decade of an international assault that destroyed much of Yemen’s infrastructure and led to the world’s worst humanitarian crisis for nearly a decade. Yet, given AnsarAllah’s rise in the early 2000s as an anti-imperialist, anti-western/Arab interventionist movement (in response to Saudi influence in Yemen and the U.S.’s bombing of Yemen and its occupation of Iraq), that “these current acts of solidarity align seamlessly [with] these goals and reflect wider support from the Yemeni public, no matter their political orientation.”

Demonstrations in Sana’a and across Yemen reveal Yemen’s unyielding devotion to Gaza, in word and deed, as indicated by the countless demonstrators who fill Sana’a every Friday. Al-Adeimi tells Splinter that Yemen’s political and military position on Gaza was not surprising as “Yemen had previously used its strategic influence in the Red Sea in solidarity with Palestine in 1973, when it closed it off to Israeli shipping during the October war.” What was surprising, though, was AnsarAllah’s ability to reroute ships in the Gulf of Aden, “which is outside their territorial influence given the Saudi-United Arab Emirates occupation and influence in southern Yemen. This is a stance that comes at a steep cost for Yemen, but it pales in comparison to the suffering of Palestinians.”

Despite the mass suffering endured by the people of Yemen, their readiness to implement a red line, demanding an end to the genocide in Gaza, reveals a faithful adherence to the tenets of revolutionary solidarity with the oppressed. As Israel’s genocide continues, and as Yemen defiantly targets the ships defying their blockade, one thing is clear: Yemen’s red line will not be broken, not by threats or by airstrikes.