Rubio says US is ‘doing the world a favour’ by bombing Houthis
We’ve also been reporting on the ongoing US attacks on Yemen, which started on Saturday night.
In an interview on Fox News Radio, the US secretary of state said those attacks are directed at the Houthis.
“It’s wrong to think about it as we’re bombing Yemen. We’re bombing the Houthis, and they happen to be located in Yemen,” Marco Rubio said.
Rubio also said the US strikes were focused on stopping Houthi attacks on the Red Sea, which he said had hurt people’s ability to buy things, “whether you’re ordering it on Amazon or buying it from a store”.
“We’re going after their ability to attack our navy ships and their ability to attack our commercial shipping, period,” he said.
He did not mention that before the US began bombing Yemen on Saturday, the Houthis had paused their Red Sea attacks since a ceasefire was reached in Gaza in January or that the Houthis had said they would resume their attacks if Israel did not lift its ongoing total blockade on the Gaza Strip.
The interview also did not address reports, verified by the UN, that at least two children were among those killed in the US attacks on Yemen.
The only one hurting people's ability to buy things is the Trump administration.
Trump personally backed Israeli attack on Gaza: Israeli analyst
Israel has claimed that it has not violated any existing agreements with Hamas because the ceasefire ended two weeks ago and accused Hamas of stalling the negotiations, according to Yoni Ben-Menachem, an Israeli journalist and political analyst.
The US, meanwhile, is “fed up” with the lack of progress and President Donald Trump has personally backed the Israeli attack on Gaza, the analyst told Al Jazeera from West Jerusalem.
Now-former President Joe Biden and later Trump also had an understanding with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that if negotiations “do not go forward as Israel wants” and captives are not released, “then Israel has the right to resume the fire in Gaza”, Ben-Menachem said, adding that the general feeling among Israelis is that they do not want the war to end without the disbanding of Hamas’s military wing.
As we have been reporting, a ceasefire agreement was signed on January 17, mediated by Egypt and Qatar, and with a guarantee from the US. Hamas adhered to all the terms of the agreement in the first phase, while Israel did not adhere to a significant part of it, with more than 1,000 violations.
Israel, with the support of the US, has refused to move to the second phase of the agreement. The US administration presented an initiative through hostage envoy Adam Boehler to release an Israeli-American captive and four bodies. Hamas agreed, provided that the second phase was implemented. Israel rejected Adam Boehler’s proposal. US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff presented an initiative to release half of the living and half of the dead in exchange for 50 days of ceasefire.
Decision to resume Gaza bombardment ‘taken a week ago'
The Israeli minister who is holding the governing coalition together, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, could not hide his celebration and said this military assault will continue, will escalate and that this is the only way forward.
A few weeks ago, this same minister said the tactic Israel would be following is to put forward a proposal that Hamas simply cannot accept in order to resume the war.
According to the Israeli media, the decision to carry out this assault was taken a week ago, so this was not an assault based on a development that Israel saw on the ground.
The framing of this is about releasing the Israeli captives, but we have to remember that this is all about messaging.
