With Houthi projectiles sending residents of central Israel to bomb shelters four nights in the last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed on Wednesday to respond to the ongoing attacks by the Yemeni rebel group. Yet, with limited intelligence on an enemy with few valuable assets, eliminating the Houthi threat may be a new challenge for Israel.

In the last two weeks, the Houthis shot five ballistic missiles and four drones at Israel, with falling fragments causing damage to property across the country. A school in the Tel Aviv suburb of Ramat Gan was destroyed by fallen shrapnel, and Israelis have been injured while running to bomb shelters. Israel struck Red Sea ports and energy infrastructure in Sanaa last Thursday, its third strike on Houthi military targets, but have otherwise not mounted a military response to the group.

The Houthis have launched over 300 projectiles at Israel since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks last year, most of which either did not reach Israel or were intercepted. The Iran-backed rebels have also attacked vessels transiting through the Gulf of Aden, causing major disruptions to international shipping.

Lighting candles in his office on the first night of Hanukkah on Wednesday, Netanyahu vowed that “the Houthis will also learn what Hamas, Hezbollah, the Assad regime and others have learned, and this will also take time. This lesson will be learned across the Middle East.”

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz gave his own warning, vowing that Israel “will not accept that fact that the Houthis continue to shoot at Israel: We will take care of their leaders in Sanaa and anywhere else in Yemen.” 

Mossad chief David Barnea, however, has reportedly urged Netanyahu and Katz to focus on Iran, rather than its Yemeni proxy, expressing uncertainty that Israel would be able to stop the Houthis, according to Israel’s Channel 13.

Yoel Guzansky, a senior fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies, said that continuing in the vein of Israel’s efforts thus far is unlikely to be successful.

“Yemen is like Somalia,” he said. “It’s worse than Gaza. They have no infrastructure. We need to understand the nature of the enemy. They’re not a country where you can attack their assets. They’re something else.”

Yaakov Katz, a senior fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute and author of books about Israel’s military, told Jewish Insider that Israel has relatively limited abilities to attack the Houthis.

“They were never a target for our intelligence gathering, so when you look at the targets selected up until now, it has all been infrastructure, like ports,” he said. “There is no indication that Israel is targeting secret bases with rockets or missiles or killing top leaders. They are not able to do the things they could do against Hezbollah and Hamas.” 

However, since the Houthis began attacking Israel, Katz said, the IDF opened an intelligence department focused on Yemen. The IDF has had difficulty finding Israelis who speak, read and write Yemeni, which is different from Arabic, and recently opened a Yemeni language class, according to Ma’ariv. The last wave of immigration to Israel from Yemen was in 1950 and few Yemeni Israelis continued to speak the language, in contrast with Farsi and some Arab dialects.  

The distance between Israel and Yemen is also a factor limiting the IDF’s ability to operate, Katz said.

In addition, Israel has mostly relied on Western allies including the U.S. and U.K. to take the lead in responding to Houthi attacks in light of the threats to international shipping routes.

Guzansky said that on a recent trip to Washington, he heard from Biden administration officials who felt they could have done more to address the challenge.

“There’s a month now until Biden steps down; maybe they’ll do more now. Maybe Trump will do more. There is more to be done,” he said.

As for Israel leaving the Houthi problem to other countries, Guzansky said that “there’s a limit to what Israel can do. It’s a distant arena. We’re a small country…We have an excellent air force, but it’s small.”

Guzansky also pointed out that Israel has more pressing priorities: “The Houthis were marginal and still are. We have to take them in proportion…The Houthis were prioritized correctly – but now they’re coming up.”

“The government has to ask itself what it is prioritizing,” Katz said. “If you’re going to go operate in Yemen, does that come at the expense of something you have to do in Iran, or other threats closer to home?… I think Israel only wakes up when something really bad happens.” 

Guzansky said that there are a number of approaches that Israel can take to respond to the Houthis.

“Finish the war in Gaza, reach an agreement, and that is the most likely way to stop the Houthis,” he said.

Another possible solution is to try to internationalize the issue as much as possible. Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar has taken steps in this direction, instructing Israeli embassies in Europe to advocate for host countries to designate the Houthis as a terrorist group and urging the U.N. Security Council to hold an emergency meeting on the Houthi attacks and Iran’s ongoing support. Sa’ar wrote that the Houthis “are threatening the freedom of navigation and international trade. They pose a threat not only to Israel but to the region and the entire world.”

Like Barnea, Guzansky also said that Israel can try to hit the Houthis by focusing on Iran. However, he said, it is “unclear that [an attack on Iran] will impact the Houthis because [Iran’s] influence is not total.”

In addition, he said, “If you attack Iran, it’s better just to attack their nuclear sites.” 

Guzansky warned against entering a war of attrition with the Houthis, in which Israel continues to conduct limited strikes against Houthi infrastructure. 

“It won’t end,” he said. “The question is whether we want a war 2,000 kilometers from us. We can’t continue it over time. We can’t do it every day, but they can shoot a missile or drone every day. Drones cost $1,000-5,000, and every hour of gas for an Air Force plane to fly costs more than that. There is a built-in asymmetry.”

“I’m concerned that’s the trap they want us to enter. A war of attrition would be perfect” for the Houthis, Guzansky added.

Another option, Guzansky said, would be to pay the Houthis to halt their attacks. The cease-fire agreement reached between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis in 2022 included hundreds of millions of dollars sent from Riyadh to Sanaa and the Houthis have not attacked Saudi Arabia in over two years.

Such a truce would likely be unpopular in Israel, where the government allowed Qatar to pay Hamas for years, yet the funds did not prevent the Oct. 7 attacks.

“It’s not a morally good solution, but perhaps the most realistic,” Guzansky said.

Guzansky argued that “none of the possibilities is perfect and they will not end [the shooting], but perhaps a mixture of all of them will do the job,” 

He also posited that “no ultimate solution will solve the problem tomorrow morning. It’s a headache… It can’t be solved.”

“[The Houthis] will remain a security problem for the Arabian peninsula, the Middle East and the world,” Guzanksy said. “They sit on a very crucial chokepoint.”