Feeble response to Israel's Hodeidah strike proves international hypocrisy

In July, the Yemeni city of Hodeidah became a flashpoint after Israel bombed its main port. AFP

The longer Israel’s war in Gaza drags on – having already killed more than 40,000 Palestinians – the more its critics rightly ask how Israel’s government is able to continue with minimal pushback from global powers.

Israeli leaders have, for most of the past year, justified their actions by saying that they are in a unique position in having to respond to Hamas’s unprecedented attack on October 7. But the way western powers treat Israel is part of a broader pattern of special treatment that can be seen in its actions elsewhere.

Back in July, the Yemeni city of Hodeidah once again became a flashpoint after Israel bombed its main port in retaliation for a Houthi-claimed drone attack on Tel Aviv the day before that killed one person. Israel’s attack indiscriminately targeted the port, hitting oil storage tanks, as well as a power plant in the Salif district. Nine people were killed and at least 83 injured. The resulting inferno lasted for more than a week and the initial damage assessment came to an estimated $20 million.

The summer passed without much response or attention from the international community. With the benefit of hindsight, and as Israel’s war in Gaza approaches its 12th month, it is worth asking why.

At the time, the US, UK, France – the P3 group of nations – and the UN expressed concern and called for “restraint”, but they did not condemn the attack. More than 80 per cent of Yemen’s humanitarian aid flows through the port of Hodeidah; Israel’s air strike threatens to impede this.

Such a muted response to the attack stands in contrast to the intense pressure experienced in 2018 by the Arab Coalition, the regional grouping that fought the Houthis from 2015, when its forces were less than three kilometres away from Hodeidah, and close to taking it from the Iran-backed rebels.

Despite the military advantage of the coalition-backed forces, the P3 and the UN called for a ceasefire and applied diplomatic pressure, with Mark Lowcock, then the UN’s leading humanitarian affairs official, telling the Security Council that an all-out assault could lead to a “catastrophic famine”. The UK’s foreign secretary at the time, Jeremy Hunt, shuttled between capitals to also put pressure on the coalition. At the time, the Coalition’s aim had been to secure Hodeidah port and ensure it was not used for weapons smuggling, not destroy it as has happened now with the Israeli strike.

Regional states might today see the West’s miscalculations as an enabler of the Houthis, inadvertently helping the rebels to use Hodeidah as a launchpad from which to threaten global maritime trade and security.

The difference in reactions to the Israeli strikes on Hodeidah – characterised by limited expressions of concern rather than outright condemnation – reflects much of the international community’s muted response to Israeli actions generally, the selective application of humanitarian concerns in international politics by bigger powers, the centrality of Israel in American, British and French grand strategies for the Middle East, and the varying perceptions of the regional actors involved.

In 2018, the international community made a global humanitarian outcry and put pressure on the Arab Coalition to halt the Hodeidah offensive. Yet the humanitarian disaster in Yemen continues to deepen. This is not only because of the implications of the Red Sea crisis that drove up the cost of food imports, war premium insurances and shipping costs – as well as declining humanitarian funding and the Houthis’ diversion of aid – but is also down to flaws in the UN’s structure and how it pursues humanitarian diplomacy.

Two weeks after reaching the Stockholm Agreement in December 2018, which included a Hodeidah ceasefire, World Food Programme chief David Beasley called for an end to aid diversion in Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen, describing it as the “stealing of food from the mouths of hungry people”. This was recognition that it was this diversion of aid, and not necessarily the coalition’s operation, that was threatening to create a humanitarian catastrophe. At the time, a tweet was attributed to a senior Houthi official who apparently threatened to bomb Hodeidah port to prevent the Yemeni government from using it.

In retrospect, the humanitarian concern seems to have been more about the ill-calculated geopolitical considerations of bigger powers rather than looming famine.

July’s Israeli attack on critical Yemeni civilian facilities was quickly overshadowed by broader geopolitical considerations. In part, Israeli framing of its operations as self-defence, counterterrorism, or confronting Iranian influence often resonates with the West’s strategic narratives and priorities, not to mention Israel’s political clout and influence in the US.

There is a reason why each US president seeks the endorsement and support of pro-Israel groups but not of any regional Arab state. Western logic behind maintaining a strong relationship with Israel is driven by grand strategic interests and historical guilt over the largely western persecution of Jews that ultimately led to Israel’s establishment.

Several influential media outlets in the West tend to demonstrate sympathetic views to Israel regardless of the deaths caused by its actions in Gaza. In parallel, hostile or at least sceptical western depictions of regional states are common, as seen with respect to Saudi Arabia during the 2018 Hodeidah offensive or during the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.

These same factors may have also conditioned the international response to Israel’s Hodeidah attack. And while a few international human rights organisations have voiced concern, with some even saying that Israel’s action in Hodeidah may amount to a war crime, these isolated statements have not translated into the same level of condemnation nor diplomatic pressure seen in 2018.

Biased media depictions coupled with unprincipled humanitarian advocacy, as well as the lack of a robust strategy that goes beyond symbolic support exists in parallel to the image tarnishing of Arab Coalition members. Together with persistent Israeli lobbying in the UK and the US, this has culminated in rising pressure and suspension of weapons sales by several countries that continue to arm Israel despite the catastrophe it has created in Gaza.

At core, the disparity of responses to Israel’s bombing of Hodeidah reveals a bigger story of enduring double standards in international politics, with detrimental effects especially for civilians.