Oil tanks burn at the port in Hodeidah, Yemen, Saturday, July 20, 2024. The Israeli army said it has struck several Houthi targets in western Yemen following a fatal drone attack by the rebel group in Tel Aviv.

The rockets from Gaza have mostly fallen silent. A ceasefire with Hezbollah militants in Lebanon has taken hold. But repeated fire from Yemen’s Houthi rebels, a faraway foe, is proving a stubborn threat for Israel.

The Iran-backed Houthis are stepping up their missile attacks, sending hundreds of thousands of Israelis scrambling for shelter in the middle of the night, scaring away foreign airlines and keeping up what could be the last major front in the Middle East wars.

“It's like musical chairs,” said Yoni Yovel, 31, who left the northern Israeli city of Haifa late last year to avoid rocket fire from Hezbollah only to see his apartment in Tel Aviv’s Jaffa neighborhood heavily damaged by a Houthi missile.

Israel has repeatedly bombarded ports, oil infrastructure and the airport in the Houthi-held capital Sanaa, some 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles) away. Israeli leaders have threatened to kill central Houthi figures and have tried to galvanize the world against the threat.

But the Houthis persist. In recent weeks, missiles and drones from Yemen have struck nearly every day, including early Friday morning, setting off air raid sirens in broad swaths of Israel. In some cases, the projectiles have penetrated Israel’s sophisticated aerial defense system, most recently toppling an empty school and shattering the windows of apartments near an empty playground where one missile landed.

Because most missiles are intercepted and because the fire is usually a single missile at a time, the strikes have not caused major physical damage, although a few attacks have been fatal during the 15-month war in Gaza as the Houthis attack in solidarity with Hamas.

But the rocket fire is posing a threat to Israel’s economy, keeping many foreign airlines away and preventing the country from jump-starting its hard-hit tourism industry.

Houthi attacks on shipping in the Red Sea have all but shuttered an Israeli port in the city of Eilat and have prompted ships destined for it to take a longer, more costly route around Africa to Israel's Mediterranean ports.

The Houthi strikes are also a symbolic reminder for Israel of the Iran-backed enemies that encircle it, known as the “Axis of Resistance,” and the last major holdout. And because Israel’s counterstrikes have yet to deter the Houthis, their persistent attacks defy Israel’s image as a regional military powerhouse.

“They are the only ones who are active now,” said Danny Citrinowicz, a research fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies, a Tel Aviv think tank.

The Houthis, he said, “are a challenge of a different kind.”

Shortly after Hamas launched its attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, the Houthis began striking Israel-linked ships in the strategic Bab el-Mandeb Strait along Yemen’s coast. Those attacks expanded to include other ships with no ties to Israel, disrupting cargo and energy shipments that are critical for worldwide trade. The Houthis said it was part of their campaign aimed at pressuring Israel and the West over the war in Gaza.

In response, U.S. and partner forces have launched multiple rounds of coordinated airstrikes against Houthi launch sites and weapons storage sites.

Throughout the war, the Houthis have also been firing missiles and drones at Israel, at first focusing on Eilat and eventually broadening attacks to include major population centers and the seaside metropolis of Tel Aviv. The launches have intensified in recent weeks.

“There was thunder the other night and my daughter thought it was a missile. She woke up and started screaming,” said Ibrahim Sosa, 53, whose home in Jaffa is near the site of a recent missile landing.

Israel has retaliated repeatedly and vowed to escalate if the attacks don't stop.

“We will hunt down all of the Houthis' leaders and we will strike them just as we have done in other places," said Defense Minister Israel Katz, shortly after Israeli jets struck Yemen last week.

The Israeli strikes have been deadly, with several people killed. Israeli military spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari told The Associated Press that Israel’s strikes focused on “military infrastructure which was used and directly contributed to Houthi terror activities, including to smuggle arms and finance their terror activities."

Hagari acknowledged the battle would be complex. And despite massive Israeli air power, the Houthis have continued their assaults. That stands in contrast to Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran — three other enemies Israel has largely neutralized over the past 15 months.

“Israel has many years of familiarity with those enemies. There is intelligence and there is the important element of a ground maneuver, and in Yemen we can't do that. The scale here is different,” said Eyal Pinko, a former Israeli defense official and senior research fellow at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, an Israeli think tank.

Yemen does not border Israel, and Israel cannot easily stage a ground invasion as it has in Gaza and Lebanon to dismantle enemies’ infrastructure. Israel has to orchestrate complex air missions to fly to Yemen, which are costly and limited in what they can achieve.

Pinko also said the Houthis have learned over years of fighting against a Saudi-led coalition how to bounce back from airstrikes.

While the Houthis have been active as an insurgent force for years, Israel hasn’t seen them as a priority or invested as much in gathering intelligence against them.

Against Hamas, yearslong intelligence helped target and erode the group's forces. With Hezbollah, Israel penetrated deep into the organization, allowing it to unleash an offensive last year that detonated the pagers of rank-and-file members and decimated its senior ranks in secret bunkers. In Iran, Israel struck Hamas’ top leader in an apartment in Tehran and knocked out many of its air defenses in an October strike that left parts of the capital exposed.

But the Houthis' hideouts, weapons and infrastructure are less known to Israel, making its counterstrikes somewhat less effective. Hagari recognized that Israel’s intelligence in Yemen was “an issue” and said the military was working to improve.

Until then, some in Israel are steeling themselves for a war of attrition with the distant enemy.

“There's no quick fix,” Citrinowicz said. “Even if the war in Gaza ends, this is a threat that will not disappear.”

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Israel confirms Syria raid on Iran-funded missile factory in September

This handout picture released by the Israeli military shows troops in a September raid on Syria's Masyaf area.

The Israeli military confirmed on Thursday that dozens of its troops were flown into Syria in September to destroy an underground missile factory funded by Iran.

The military, which rarely comments on its activities inside Syria, said in a statement that the September 8 raid involved more than 100 Israeli commandos who dismantled the facility in the Masyaf area near the Mediterranean coast.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor reported at the time that 27 people were killed in the raid. The Israeli military did not disclose any casualty figures.

Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes in Syria since civil war broke out in 2011, mainly on Iranian-linked targets.

In a statement on Thursday, the military said the underground factory in Masyaf "included advanced assembly lines designed to manufacture precision-guided missiles and long-range rockets" for Lebanon's Hezbollah "and other Iranian terror proxies in the region".

Troops were flown in by helicopter, "with fire and intelligence-gathering support from aircraft, fighter jets and naval vessels", it said.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the raid underscored Israel's resolve to carry out operations anywhere to defend itself.

"This is one of the most important counteractions we have taken against the Iranian axis's attempts to arm itself in order to harm us, and it demonstrates our determination and audacity to act anywhere to protect ourselves," Netanyahu said in a statement.

Military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani said: "This precision-guided missile factory was dug in the side of a mountain underground in the area of Masyaf".

"Most components in fact were sourced from Iran for precision-guided missiles and surface-to-surface missiles."

The factory had the capacity to manufacture hundreds of missiles a year, Shoshani added.

The Observatory said the facility was created and supervised by Iran's Revolutionary Guards.

Tehran at the time condemned the raid as a "criminal attack".

- Hundreds of air strikes -

Israeli military chief Herzi Halevi, who oversaw the operation, said it was part of "a series of courageous missions" across the Middle East "with the aim of destroying the Iranian axis's missile manufacturing capabilities".

Halevi pointed to other raids in the Gaza Strip, in Hezbollah's south Beirut stronghold and on Iranian territory "over the past few months".

"For years, Iran formed a ring of rocket and missile fire around Israel's borders, and we have struck both the ring and its head," he said.

Footage of the raid, released by the military on Thursday, showed soldiers boarding helicopters at a base and later landing at the target inside Syria.

The troops can be seen entering the compound as gunfire echoes in the background. Grainy images later depict soldiers returning to their base.

The military statement said critical machinery and documents found at the factory were brought to Israel for further investigation.

"The soldiers destroyed the compound and safely returned to Israeli territory," it said.

Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP after the raid that intense air strikes preceded it, destroying a separate "scientific research centre" in Masyaf used for weapons development.

Since Islamist-led rebels toppled Syria's longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad on December 8, Israel has carried out hundreds of air strikes on Syrian military assets in what it says is a bid to prevent them from falling into hostile hands.

In a move that drew widespread international condemnation, Israel also sent troops into a UN-patrolled buffer zone that separated Israeli and Syrian forces on the Golan Heights.

On Thursday, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar visited the buffer zone and met UN peacekeepers there, a statement from his office said.

"Israel is closely monitoring the situation in Syria, and will not jeopardise its own security. We will not allow another October 7 on any front," Saar added, referring to the Hamas attack on Israel in 2023 that triggered the Gaza war.

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