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CNN
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Israel is ready to counter the efforts of the Houthi rebels in Yemen traffic in the Red Sea will be disrupted if the international community does not act, Israel’s Defense Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi said Saturday.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke with US President Joe Biden as well as European leaders about the Houthis targeting merchant ships and alleged Israeli ties, Hanegbi tell Israel’s Route 12.
“Israel is giving the world time to organize in order to prevent this but if there should not be an international organization, because it is an international issue, we will act to remove this attack by the sea,” Hanegbi said.
The Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen are a Shia political and military organization that has been fighting a civil war against a Saudi-backed group since 2014.
There has been an increase in their maritime activities since the attack by Hamas on Israel on October 7.
US warships have long protected shipping in the region. Last week, a US warplane shot down several drones coming from Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen in the south. south of the Red Sea, according to US military officials. One of the incidents occurred during the attacks on three commercial ships.
US military office it is said They are considering increasing security for commercial vessels plying a key Red Sea shipping route amid a series of recent gun attack by Houthi militias operating outside Yemen.
The United States has discussed ways to increase security in the area with members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a large naval unit tasked with protecting commercial shipping in the Red Sea.
U.S. officials have publicly stated that the discussions are about the possibility of taking ships operating in the Red Sea and where to the Sea of Bab-el-Mandeb in the Gulf of Aden – the narrow passage between Yemen and the Horn of Africa.
Khaled Abdullah/Reuters
New Houthi fighters are recruited during a parade in Sanaa, Yemen on December 2, 2023.
Hanegi also discussed developments on the ground in Gaza, saying that the US has not given Israel a deadline to complete military operations in the enclave.
“They understand that they are not in a position to tell the IDF how long it will take to achieve the goals,” he said.
“The good thing is that they have the same goals… It’s fair to say that we can’t measure this in weeks and I’m not sure we can measure it in months.”
CNN has it previously reported U.S. officials hope that the Israeli operation aimed at the southern part of the area will last a few weeks before changing, possibly in January, to a reduced, hyper-localized system that mimics the militants and Hamas leaders, according to several senior administration officials. .
The White House is very concerned about how Israel’s actions will proceed in the coming weeks, a senior US administration official said.
The US has warned Israel firmly of “difficult” and “direct” talks, the official said, that the Israel Defense Forces cannot repeat the kind of destructive tactics used in the north and that some measures should be taken to limit the public.
Hanegi said the Hamas leader did not consider the scope of Israel’s response to the attack against southern Israel on October 7, which killed an estimated 1,200 people.
“I don’t think Yahya Sinwar (Leader of Hamas in Gaza) knew that the IDF would actually go anywhere they wanted in Gaza and kill over 7,000 terrorists,” Hanegbi said.
“This is a small estimate, it could be higher since we don’t know everything,” he added.
“We are getting closer to the control and command centers of Hamas in Jabalia and Shejaiya, the strongholds of the ongoing resistance in the north of Gaza. And in the south we are working hard.”
When asked about the possibility that Israel could choose between killing Sinwar and sparing the hostages if they were in the same place, Hanegbi said: “We can face such a situation, it is a heartbreaking problem for any decision maker, but it means (we) have reached him.”
This is a developing story and will be updated.