Israel’s president recently appeared at a ceremony in the village of Kafr Qasim, commemorating the anniversary of the killing of 49 Arab civilians by Israeli border police in 1957. (The next year, Israeli courts convicted eight of those involved.) In his speech, Reuven Rivlin reiterated Israel’s official apology for the killings, condemned recent acts of Palestinian terror, and commented frankly on the future of the relationship between Israeli Jews and Arabs.

Friends, “I hereby swear, in my name and that of all of our descendants, that we will never act against the principle of equal rights, and we will never try and force someone from our land.” These are not my words, but the words of Ze’ev Jabotinsky, the founder of the Beitar movement. Words he spoke more than 80 years ago, and which I repeat here today.

The state of Israel is the national home of the Jewish people, who returned to their land after two millennia of exile. This was its very purpose. However, the state of Israel will also always be the homeland of the Arab population, which numbers more than one-and-a-half million, and makes up more than twenty percent of the population of the country. . . .

I am not naïve. There is no point in denying or ignoring the reality of relations between the communities. Between the Jewish and Arab populations of the state of Israel, there remain the sentiments of a difficult past. We belong to two nations, whose dreams and aspirations, to a great extent contradict each other. . . . [T]he Arab population of Israel must be brought to internalize and accept that the state of Israel is the national home of the Jewish people. As long as there exists any aspiration to eradicate the Jews from this land, there will be no chance of building a true partnership.

Last Tuesday, the Houthis—the faction now ruling much of Yemen—said that they intend to renew attacks on international shipping through the Red and Arabian Seas. They had for the most part paused their attacks following the January 19 Israel-Hamas cease-fire, but their presence has continued to scare away maritime traffic near the Yemeni coast, with terrible consequences for the global economy.

The U.S. responded on Saturday by initiating strikes on Houthi missile depots, command-and-control centers, and propaganda outlets, and has promised that the attacks will continue for days, if not weeks. The Houthis responded by launching drones, and possibly missiles, at American naval ships, apparently without result. Another missile fired from Yemen struck the Sinai, but was likely aimed at Israel. As Ari Heistein has written in Mosaic, it may take a sustained and concerted effort to stop the Houthis, who have high tolerance for casualties—but this is a start. Ron Ben-Yishai provides some context:

The goal is to punish the Houthis for directly targeting Western naval vessels in the Red Sea while also exerting indirect pressure on Tehran over its nuclear program. . . . While the Biden administration did conduct airstrikes against the Houthis, it refrained from a proactive military campaign, fearing a wider regional war. However, following the collapse of Iran’s axis—including Hizballah’s heavy losses in Lebanon and the fall of the Assad regime in Syria—the Trump administration appears unafraid of such an escalation.

Iran, the thinking goes, will also get the message that the U.S. isn’t afraid to use force, or risk the consequences of retaliation—and will keep this in mind as it considers negotiations over its nuclear program. Tamir Hayman adds:

The Houthis are the last proxy of the Shiite axis that have neither reassessed their actions nor restrained their weapons. Throughout the campaign against the Yemenite terrorist organization, the U.S.-led coalition has made operational mistakes: Houthi regime infrastructure was not targeted; the organization’s leaders were not eliminated; no sustained operational continuity was maintained—only actions to remove immediate threats; no ground operations took place, not even special-forces missions; and Iran has not paid a price for its proxy’s actions.

But if this does not stop the Houthis, it will project weakness—not just toward Hamas but primarily toward Iran—and Trump’s power diplomacy will be seen as hollow. The true test is one of output, not input. The only question that matters is not how many strikes the U.S. carries out, but whether the Red Sea reopens to all vessels. We will wait and see—for now, things look brighter than they did before.