Anger is rising against the West across the regionThe third reason the Houthis are unlikely to be deterred by airstrikes or a terrorist designation is that their actions articulate the wider region’s fury at Israel’s war in Gaza, which has so far claimed the lives of 25,000 Palestinians, and the decades of Western support for Israel’s policies in occupied Gaza and the West Bank.They have also tapped into profound grievances about the West’s policies more generally and its record of reinforcing unpopular regimes in the face of popular action for change. This includes the selling of weapons and bestowing of political legitimacy to authoritarian regimes in exchange for what the West considers “stability” in the world order.Yemenis are, however, keenly aware that the Houthis’ rise and expansion was enabled by this same external push for stability, which came at the expense of Yemenis’ ability to determine local solutions to local problems.By centring the defence of Palestinians in their actions, the Houthis have found a way to discredit their domestic opponents – something that has largely eluded them for 20 years. This will make them even harder to dislodge from power and will likely consign ordinary Yemenis to further violence at their hands.Sarah G. Phillips, Professor of Global Conflict and Development at The University of Sydney; Non-Resident Fellow at the Sana’a Center for Strategic Studies, University of SydneyThis article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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