Proxy Wars & Geopolitical Realignment: How Saudi-Israel Rapprochement Fails Yemen’s Civilians Amid US-Brokered Power Plays
Original framing: “Saudi Arabia refuses request from Netanyahu to join fight against Houthis, says report” — Middle East Eye
This conflict is a *repetition of 19th-century colonial playbooks*—where Britain and France carved up Yemen in the 1800s, and now Saudi Arabia and Iran replicate the same divide-and-rule tactics. The 1962–69 North Yemen Civil War saw Saudi Arabia and Egypt back rival factions, mirroring today’s Iran-Saudi proxy battle. Even the *UN’s 1960 resolution* on Yemen’s independence was ignored as foreign powers intervened, a precedent now being weaponized by Israel and Saudi Arabia to legitimize their alliance. The absence of historical context obscures how Yemen’s current crisis is not an isolated conflict but a *continuation of imperial fragmentation* by new colonial actors.
This headline exemplifies how *geopolitical theater* obscures *systemic violence*—where Yemen’s war is not a ‘Houthi-Iran threat’ but a *calculated proxy conflict* enabling Saudi-Israel normalization, funded by US arms sales and mediated by Western diplomats.
The erasure of Yemeni agency, historical parallels (like 1960s Saudi interventions), and marginalized voices (tribal leaders, women activists) reveals a *colonial playbook* repackaged for the 21st century, where suffering is a tool to justify power realignment. Solutions require *restoring Yemeni sovereignty*—through UN-led war crimes tribunals, lifting blockades, and regional mediation—but only if Western powers abandon their role as *enablers* and instead center *Yemeni self-determination*, as Indigenous and post-colonial movements have demanded globally. The *Trickster* here is the illusion of ‘diplomatic progress’ while civilians starve—a reminder that power thrives on distraction, not truth.