People in Yemen have temporarily forgotten the war their country has been seeing and have shifted their focus on the ongoing Hamas-Israeli conflict, which has so far left at least 600 Israelis and nearly 400 Palestinians dead, besides some thousands injured.
On Saturday, Hamas fighters launched a surprise attack and invaded some Israeli settlements, causing diverse emotions worldwide, including Yemen, where people take pride in the ongoing Hamas offensive on Israel.
Thousands of people in Taiz and Sanaa took to the streets Saturday, chanting pro-Palestine slogans and praising the “courage” of Hamas resistance fighters. Similarly, thousands of civilians gathered in Bab Al-Yemen in the capital, Sanaa, displaying their solidarity with Palestine and its people.
Saleem Al-Taheri, a university graduate in Sanaa, told Sheba Intelligence that people came to Bab Al-Yemen like a flood from everywhere to express their collective stance on the right of the Palestinians to defend themselves. He told Sheba Intelligence, “Palestine has been under Israeli aggression for multiple decades, and the occupier has felt that no Palestinian faction can hurt it. Today, we are proud to see Hamas enter the Israeli settlements and remind Israel it will never be safe.”
The National Alliance of Yemeni Political Parties said that the “Al-Aqsa Flood” operation, which was carried out by the Palestinian resistance deep into the occupied territories, is a "legitimate response to the Zionist entity’s continued barbaric attacks on the Palestinian people and Islamic holy sites."
Countless Yemeni families are glued to TV channels, watching developments in the Gaza Strip and Israel. While they exhibit euphoria over the Israeli setback, they mourn the rising number of civilian deaths and injuries in this new Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
This new cycle of violence between Israelis and Palestinians can arouse tensions in the region, and its continuation will have fallout in several countries. Today, two Israeli tourists and their Egyptian guide have been shot dead in the Egyptian city of Alexandria, according to the Israeli foreign ministry. The assailant was an Egyptian policeman.
According to US political observers, this conflict will not affect Arabs and Israelis. Instead, its consequences will hit countries outside the Asian continent.
Thomas L. Friedman, a columnist at the New York Times, said the fresh round of war between Israel and Hamas may drive the US to divert its military support from Ukraine to Israel. He wrote, “If Israel is about to invade Gaza and embark on a long war, Ukraine will have to worry about competition from Tel Aviv for Patriot missiles as well as 155-millimeter artillery shells and other basic armaments that Ukraine desperately needs more of and Israel surely will, too.”