Israel vows retaliation after Houthi missile attack

A police officer inspects the area around a fire in a field.

Sept. 15, 2024 Updated 10:58 AM PT

TEL AVIV — A missile fired by Yemen’s Houthi rebels targeted the center of Israel on Sunday, setting off warning sirens and sending passengers and staff scurrying for shelters at the country’s main international airport. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to exact a “heavy price.”

The episode — less than two months after a drone launched by the group hit Tel Aviv — represented a new escalation in Israel’s confrontation with the Iranian-backed rebels.

It also offered a thunderous reminder that Israel is currently engaged in a three-front battle — with the Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza, with the Lebanon-based Hezbollah on its northern border, and with the Houthis, who say they are acting in solidarity with Palestinians.

Sunday’s strike did not cause any serious damage or direct injuries, Israeli officials said, but triggered pointed questions as to how the projectile was able to travel so far into Israeli airspace. The Israeli military said the missile apparently fragmented in midair, and that it was examining the debris.

News footage showed a blaze in a rural field about seven miles from Ben Gurion airport, and loud booms were heard in the vicinity. Minor damage was reported at a train station in the town of Modiin, in the country’s center. Authorities said normal operations resumed at the airport a short time after the strike, which occurred just after 6:30 a.m. local time.

A Houthi statement claiming responsibility suggested an increased level of sophistication in the group’s arsenal and tactics. In a televised address on Sunday morning, the Houthis’ military spokesman, Yahya Saree, claimed to have sown “fear and panic” with the group’s use of what he described as a hypersonic ballistic missile. The Israeli military denied it was a hypersonic weapon, saying none of Israel’s adversaries possessed such tehnology.

Since the start of the Gaza war, the Houthis have repeatedly fired drones and missiles toward Israel, but nearly all were intercepted over the Red Sea. On July 19, an Iranian-made drone launched by the group hit near the Tel Aviv seafront, killing one man and injuring several other people.

Israel retaliated then with multiple airstrikes in Houthi-controlled territory in Yemen, an impoverished country at the tip of the Arabian peninsula where the rebels have been waging war on government forces for two decades.

Netanyahu indicated that this strike, too, would trigger an Israeli response.

“The Houthis should know by now that we exact a heavy price for any attempt to harm us,” he told his Cabinet hours after the attack. “Anyone who needs a reminder is invited to visit the port of Hodeidah” — the Yemeni coastal city, a Houthi stronghold, which was targeted after the July drone strike in Tel Aviv.

The attack was praised by Hamas, with Abu Obaida, the spokesman for its armed wing, calling it a “qualitative shift.” But in addition to the Israeli denial that the missile was hypersonic, some experts expressed skepticism as well.

“Right now, the only side that’s talking about hypersonic are the Houthis,” said Mohammed al-Basha, a senior Middle East analyst at Navanti, a risk-assessment group.

The Israeli military said it employed air defenses when the missile was detected, but was still assessing the incident. To date, only one other Houthi-fired missile has been reported to have penetrated Israeli territory, striking near the Red Sea port of Eilat in March.

Since the outbreak of the Gaza war — which began after Hamas-led attackers broke through the seaside enclave’s border fence last Oct. 7 and attacked southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people and kidnapping some 250 others — the Houthis have also attacked commercial shipping in the Red Sea, depicting the strikes on vessels from a variety of nations as a blockade on Israel due to the Gaza war.

Saree, the Houthi spokesman, said with the one-year anniversary of the war approaching, Israel should expect more attacks. The Gaza war has killed more than 41,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health authorities, and devastated the small territory, laying waste to whole districts and displacing virtually the entire population of about 2.3 million.

Additionally, in what has become a near-daily exchange of fire along the Israel-Lebanon border, the military said about 40 rockets and other projectiles were fired from Lebanon early Sunday. Cross-border strikes have displaced tens of thousands of people on both sides of the frontier.

Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported the Israeli military dropped leaflets on a village in south Lebanon telling residents that Hezbollah was firing from the area and residents should leave their homes. Israeli media later reported the leaflet drop was done at the initiative of a local commander, and did not receive approval from senior military or political leaders.

Netanyahu also hinted that Israel might escalate its strikes inside Lebanon, saying the situation “requires a change in the balance of power on our northern border.”

“The status quo will not continue,” he told his Cabinet.

King reported from Tel Aviv and Bulos from Beirut.