Yemen rebels call truce after wave of attacks on Saudi Arabia
Yemen rebels call truce after wave of attacks on Saudi Arabia
Soldiers loyal to Yemen's Huthi rebels join a rally in the rebel-held capital Sanaa (AFP/MOHAMMED HUWAIS)
MOHAMMED HUWAIS
Sat, March 26, 2022
Yemen's
Huthi rebels announced a three-day truce with the Saudi-led coalition
and dangled the prospect of a "permanent" ceasefire on Saturday, the
seventh anniversary of a brutal conflict that has left millions on the
brink of famine.
A day after a wave of Huthi drone and missile
attacks on Saudi targets, including an oil plant that turned into an
inferno near the Formula One race in Jeddah, political leader Mahdi
al-Mashat put rebel operations on hold.
As thousands of people
marched in the rebel-held capital, Sanaa, to mark the anniversary,
Mashat appeared on TV to announce the "suspension of missile and drone
strikes and all military actions for a period of three days".
"And
we are ready to turn this declaration into a final and permanent
commitment in the event that Saudi Arabia commits to ending the siege
and stopping its raids on Yemen once and for all," he said.
There
was no immediate response from Saudi Arabia, which retaliated to
Friday's attacks by launching air strikes against the Iran-backed rebels
in Sanaa and Hodeida, and destroying four explosives-laden boats.
UN
chief Antonio Guterres on Saturday condemned the rebel strikes and
reprisals by the Saudi-led coalition, calling on "all parties to
exercise maximum restraint" and "urgently reach a negotiated settlement
to end the conflict".
Israel, which does not have diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia, expressed its "sorrow" over the Huthi attack.
"This
attack is further proof that Iran's regional aggression knows no
bounds," Prime Minister Naftali Bennett wrote on Twitter in a rare
public message to the kingdom.
French President Emmanuel Macron also condemned the rebel attack and expressed "solidarity" with Saudi Arabia.
Yemen,
the Arab world's poorest country even before the war, has been
teetering on the brink of catastrophe for years as the complex conflict
rages on multiple fronts.
Hundreds of thousands of people have
been killed, directly or indirectly, and millions have been displaced in
what the UN calls the world's worst humanitarian crisis.
- 'Peace will come' -
Mashat
said the Huthis are ready to "release all coalition prisoners,
including (president Abdrabbuh Mansur) Hadi's brother, militia prisoners
and other nationalities in exchange for the full release of all our
prisoners".
"The Saudi regime must prove its seriousness... by
responding to a ceasefire, lifting the siege and expelling foreign
forces from our country.
"And then peace will come and then it
will be time to talk about political solutions in a calm atmosphere away
from any military or humanitarian pressure."
The Tehran-backed
rebels' surprise move came exactly seven years after the Saudi-led
coalition's intervention to support Yemen's government, after the Huthis
seized Sanaa in 2014.
After months of negotiations, Iran is near
to reviving a stalled deal with international partners where it will
curb its nuclear ambitions in return for an easing of sanctions.
When it first intervened in Yemen on March 26, 2015, the Saudi-led coalition was made up of nine countries.
Today,
it is largely just Saudi Arabia and, to a lesser extent, the United
Arab Emirates, which says it has withdrawn troops from Yemen but remains
an influential partner.
The coalition's intervention has stopped
the Huthis' advances in the south and east of the country but has been
unable to push them out of the north, including the capital Sanaa.
"Militarily,
the war is now at stalemate," Elisabeth Kendall, a researcher at Oxford
University, told AFP this week, adding that Saudi Arabia "may at this
point be keen to extract itself" from Yemen.
"But it needs to be
able to position any withdrawal as a win and to ensure that it is not
left with a Huthi-controlled enemy state on its southern border," she
said.