Human Rights Watch says Israel airstrikes on Yemen port violate laws of war News
IDF Spokesperson's Unit, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Human Rights Watch says Israel airstrikes on Yemen port violate laws of war

Human Rights Watch released a report Monday saying Israel’s “indiscriminate and disproportionate” July airstrikes on Yemen’s Hodeidah port violated laws of war.

Yemeni civilians depend on receiving food and humanitarian aid at Yemen’s Hodeidah port in the city of Al Hudaydah, located on the Red Sea coast in western Yemen. On July 20, 2024, Israel Defence Forces (IDF) attacked the Hodeidah port in retaliation for a Houthi drone strike on Tel Aviv. The IDF’s response damaged oil and electrical facilities owned by the Yemen Petroleum Company (YPC), resulting in the death of six YPC employees and injuries to more than 80 civilians.

The airstrike on the port, called Operation Outstretched Arm, destroyed a power plant in the region, which provided Al Hudaydah’s electricity, air conditioning and refrigeration used for hospitals, schools and homes. The port is used in deliveries of food and other needs for Yemen’s people. 70 percent of commercial supplies and 80 percent of humanitarian supplies enter through the port. Israeli forces had destroyed more than half of the oil storage tanks at Hodeidah port and oil tanks linked to a power plant.

Human Rights Watch stressed that the Israeli attack violated the laws of war, which set out what conduct is acceptable in warfare. Article 51 of the Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions, to which Yemen is a party, prohibits indiscriminate attacks, defined as strikes “not directed at a specific military objective … [and] are of a nature to strike military objectives and civilians or civilian objects without distinction.” Article 54 (2) prohibits the removal of objects, such as foodstuffs, water and other supplies.

Human Rights Watch Yemen and Bahrain researcher Niku Jafarina said that the attacks will only aggravate the Yemeni people’s suffering as they already face a nine-year humanitarian crisis, involving poverty, 4.5 million displaced people, and half of the population at risk of hunger.

Human Rights Watch interviewed a member of Yemen’s Houthi rebel group, a Shia Islamist political and military movement, and the Houthi official stated that Israel’s strikes on the port had been done while only civilians had been present. The UN Mission to Support the Hodeidah Agreement guarantees no military presence at the port to avoid harm to civilians and civilian infrastructure.

Human Rights Watch recommended that the United States and the United Kingdom halt offering military aid to Israel due to laws of war violations and said that in offering aid, they are complicit in Israel’s war crimes. The Houthi attack on Israel may also amount to a war crime, the UN Panel of Experts on Yemen stated that Iran should not send missiles to the Houthis, and previous attacks by the Houthi group on international ships were said to be “international piracy” by the US Department of State.

The Iran-backed Houthis carried out their Tel Aviv drone strike on July 19, 2024, injuring 10 people and killing one. The unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) drone attack had struck an apartment building in Tel Aviv near the US Embassy on Ben Yehuda Street. Earlier attacks by the Houthis had been prevented by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) and allied forces in the region. Israel’s attack on Hodeidah Port one day later had been done in retaliation.

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