Last week’s strikes on a petroleum facility in a Houthi-controlled port city that suddenly changed the calculus of the Palestinian conflict and sent shivers through the international community was in fact a way of reminding the world that the Israelis were not ready to move on towards reconciliation. Quite predictably, Israel targeted Hodeidah in response to the most significant Houthi attack to date on Israel in which they unleashed a drone attack on Tel Aviv. Further attacks are threatened, much more believable considering their previous attacks on ships moving through the Red Sea. The Hodeidah port, however, is not only important to the Houthis but also to Yemen as a whole, a major reason why humanitarian organisations have always prioritised ceasefires to preserve port operations. In a country, where 21.6 million people still require some aid and continue to battle a war that has gone nowhere in years with the only constant being the killing and suffering of innocent civilians, any such instance would only serve to exacerbate the sufferings of the common man. This is appalling because, unlike some other wars where international aid outfits make enough noise for the world to at least know part of the truth, Yemen has never received its due attention because of the blanket ban imposed by the Arab coalition on any sort of independent coverage of it. The fact remains, though, that this is also just another flashpoint for the great Middle Eastern rivalry wherein countries like the US and the UK understand the economic and humanitarian impasse, Israel’s attack was neither condemned nor opposed by the Arab world. Things have come to a point that a country’s very open and public attack on a Hamas leader sitting inside another country cannot be condemned by the likes of Pakistan because of its awkward diplomatic position. Had it not been so, Islamabad would have tried to find all relevant facts related to Ismail Hanniyeh’s assassination in Iran before rolling out a press release instead of editing it in what would go down as yet smoother faux pause of the Foreign Office. At present, all it can do is try and rally the international community into pressuring Israel to end efforts to prolong the crisis. Now that the world has been reminded that the war in Yemen is still raging and taking innocent lives and nothing more, the bloc of the more powerful and influential countries is expected to finally put its foot down and ensure that all hostilities cease sooner rather than later. *