Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday warned Yemen’s Houthi rebels of retaliation after the group claimed a missile attack on central Israel.
“This morning, the Houthis launched a surface-to-surface missile from Yemen into our territory. They should have known by now that we charge a heavy price for any attempt to harm us,” Netanyahu said at the start of a cabinet meeting, according to a statement from his office.
“Those who need a reminder in this matter are invited to visit the port of Hodeida,” he added, referring to Yemen’s Red Sea city that Israeli warplanes bombed in July after the Houthis claimed a drone strike that killed a civilian in Tel Aviv.
The Houthis are among the Iran-backed groups in the Middle East that have been drawn into the conflict triggered by Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel.
On Israel’s northern flank, Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement has traded regular cross-border fire with Israeli forces in exchanges that threaten to spiral into all-out war.
On Sunday morning about 40 projectiles were fired from Lebanon towards Israel’s Upper Galilee region and the annexed Golan Heights, Israel’s military said.
Tens of thousands of people have been displaced on both sides of the Israel-Lebanon border, and Netanyahu said on Sunday that the current situation was not sustainable.
“The existing situation will not continue. We will do everything necessary to return our residents safely to their homes,” he said.
“We are in a multi-arena campaign against Iran’s evil axis that strives to destroy us.”
He described speaking with residents and authorities in the north, saying, “I hear the distress, I hear the cries.
“The status quo will not continue. This requires a change in the balance of power on our northern border.”
Meanwhile, Hamas on Sunday vowed that Israel “will not enjoy security” unless it ends its offensive in Gaza, as the Palestinian group praised Yemen’s Huthi rebels for their rare missile attack on Israel.
Hamas considers the missile attack a “natural response to the Zionist entity’s aggression against our Palestinian people…We affirm that the Zionist enemy will not enjoy security unless it ceases its brutal aggression against our people in the Gaza Strip,” the group said in a statement.