By Robert Inlakesh
The Ramon Airport in southern Israel was struck by a drone launched by Ansarallah. (Photo: video grab)
It has become clear that Yemen’s ballistic missiles are developing, many succeeding at hitting targets, often causing the Israeli military to trip over itself in lying about whether it was intercepted or not, writes Robert Inlakesh.
A recent Yemeni drone attack on the Israeli-occupied port city of Umm Rashrash (Eilat) managed to inflict around 24 injuries and has proven that Yemen’s Armed Forces have now developed an effective strategy for hitting targets with loitering munitions. This may end up having major consequences for the Israelis in the long term.
While Yemen has been experimenting with firing different variations of drones and missiles towards Israeli targets throughout the course of the genocide in Gaza, with the stated aim of pressuring Tel Aviv to end its aggression, many times the munitions would not reach their targets. This appears to be dramatically changing.
Following the assassination of Yemen’s Prime Minister, Ahmed Ghaleb al-Rahwi, along with several of his cabinet members, via Israeli airstrikes on civilian areas inside Sana’a, the intensity of the attacks from the Yemeni Armed Forces has escalated.
While a single drone or missile was traditionally used in most operations against the Israelis, with the stated aim of imposing an aerial blockade on Tel Aviv, we are now seeing the Yemeni forces fire ballistic missiles possessing cluster-munition warheads and three drones at a time towards any given series of targets.
Two weeks ago, a drone attack even impacted Ramon airport directly, inflicting injuries at the terminal and temporarily shutting down the airport. Then, last week, a Yemeni drone managed to strike in front of the ‘Jacob Hotel’ in the Eilat Port area, causing a fire and material damage.
The reason why this is such a significant development is that there could be an opportunity here for Yemen’s ruling Ansarallah Party to take the active step aimed at completely crushing a portion of the Israeli domestic tourism industry.
Umm al-Rashrash, now known as Eilat after the area was ethnically cleansed during the Nakba, is a port city that has suffered immense economic blows due to Yemen’s blockade imposed in the Red Sea. Despite both the Biden and Trump administrations expending billions of dollars on their military operations to break the blockade, they failed and decided in the end to retreat.
Financial Losses
Not only has the Port of Eilat long declared bankruptcy, leading to the loss of businesses and jobs in the area, but in 2024 alone, the estimated cost of the blockade in the Red Sea was said to have been around $200 million.
Beyond the port itself, the economy in Eilat is also fueled by tourism. Evidently, tourism has been dramatically reduced throughout occupied Palestine since the beginning of the genocide, and many international airlines aren’t even taking the risk of flying to Ben Gurion Airport in Lydd anymore. This has meant that for a city like Eilat, it depends immensely on domestic tourism, as opposed to that of international travelers.
If Yemen continues to pursue the strategy of successfully targeting Eilat, inflicting casualties and material damage, especially in the case that the Israeli military fails to give sufficient pre-warning for incoming munitions, this may have a dramatic impact on domestic tourism in the area.
In the event that domestic tourism greatly reduces as a result of these attacks, while the cost of damage to local infrastructure also continues to pile up, it could contribute to totally paralysing the economy and everyday life there.
A similar strategy was in fact adopted by Hezbollah in Lebanon last year, when they decided to continually hammer the likes of the Kiryat Shmona settlement with rockets, guided missiles and drone strikes. The impact that Hezbollah had on the northern settlements is still being felt today, as many Israelis simply refuse to return, and the tourism industry also took an unprecedented hit.
Psychological Impact
There is also the psychological impact that these kinds of blows have on the Israeli settler population at large, as many of them choose to spend their holidays in locations like Eilat, the occupied Golan Heights and the Lebanese border area. This option no longer being viable for them contributes to a feeling of isolation.
This may also be contributing to the mass influx of Israelis to places like Cyprus, which they are now treating as a “second Israel”, many purchasing holiday homes there and others moving there permanently.
While the Israelis continually flee and refrain from entering certain more dangerous portions of Israeli-occupied territory, once deemed holiday tourist destinations, the Yemeni Armed Forces are developing new and more advanced weapons.
Developing Ballistic Missiles
It has become clear that Yemen’s ballistic missiles are developing, many succeeding at hitting targets, often causing the Israeli military to trip over itself in lying about whether it was intercepted or not.
These missiles also serve a number of purposes from a military perspective. They not only shut down the likes of airports, send settlers running to bunkers, instill fear, and when they hit targets, cause damage and casualties, but they also drain Israeli air defense systems.
As a new round of hostilities between the Israelis and Iran appears to be only around the corner, the drain on the air defences is a bonus for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), yet what is perhaps even more valid is the data that can be retrieved about the Israeli-US air defence systems themselves.
The Yemeni drones and missiles help find weaknesses in the air defences and also positions from which the anti-air missiles are fired. The continuation of these attacks may not immediately succeed in bringing the Israelis to their knees, but the impact over time is certainly causing potentially irreversible effects.
(The Palestine Chronicle)
– Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker. He focuses on the Middle East, specializing in Palestine. He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle.
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