Following the repeated and continued launching of missiles and drones by the Houthis towards Israeli towns, political sources in Tel Aviv revealed that Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is considering the possibility of responding by launching a large-scale attack in Yemen, very soon.

The official Israeli Broadcasting Corporation (Kan 11) quoted a senior Israeli official on Monday as saying that the army “is considering launching a major attack in Yemen, after two ballistic missiles were fired towards the country in the past two days, and a drone on Monday.” He added that the Israeli security establishment “realizes that it is necessary to send a more painful message” to the Houthis, who continue to launch missiles and drones towards Israel, unlike the factions in Iraq, which have reduced their targeting of Israel in the past two weeks.

The Houthis claimed responsibility for launching a drone at the southern Israeli city of Yavneh earlier Monday, causing a major fire in a high-rise building. They described the strike as “a victory for the oppressed Palestinian people and their mujahideen, and a response to the Israeli enemy’s massacres against our brothers in the Gaza Strip.”

Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree said, "The Yemeni armed forces' drone air force carried out a qualitative military operation targeting a sensitive Israeli enemy target in the Yafna area in Ashdod, south of the Jaffa region in occupied Palestine, with a drone that successfully hit its target." He pointed out that "this operation comes within the fifth phase of supporting the Palestinian resistance." Saree stressed that "the Yemeni armed forces confirm that they will confront any Israeli aggression on our country with more qualitative military operations, and that their support operations for the Palestinian people will not stop until the aggression stops and the siege on the Gaza Strip is lifted."

The Israeli army announced on Sunday morning that it had intercepted a missile launched from Yemen, noting that it had been intercepted before it penetrated Israeli airspace, without there being any need to activate the sirens.

Last week, the Houthis in Yemen (Ansar Allah) announced that they had carried out three military operations with drones against targets in northern and southern Israel, in conjunction with Hezbollah in Iraq. According to Israeli military data, more than 200 cruise missiles and drones have been launched from Yemen since the start of the war on Gaza on October 7, 2023. One of them killed an Israeli citizen in Tel Aviv last July.

Last September, dozens of Israeli fighter jets attacked large-scale targets in Yemen, which it said belonged to the Houthis, in an operation that Israel said was more extensive than all the Western attacks on the Houthis. The Kan report noted the death of an Israeli who had been killed in July in Tel Aviv when a drone launched from Yemen was shot down. The drone’s path at the time extended along the Mediterranean Sea and penetrated Tel Aviv from the sea.