 Tensions have spiked in West Asia after the US and UK launched strikes against Yemen. This is in response to drone attacks by Ansar Allah known as the Houthis on ships. The Houthis have been warning for a while that ships bound to and from Israel would be targeted as part of operations against the genocidal war against Palestinians. Now the question is what will be the impact of these strikes by the US and UK the first since 2016. We go to Abdul for details. Abdul, thank you so much for joining us. A dramatic escalation in West Asia and the Red Sea region, so could you maybe first take us through what the latest reports say, what exactly has happened? Well as per the statement issued by the American Central Command on their Twitter page, around 2.30 in the morning on 12th of January both US and UK forces carried out different kinds of strikes inside various locations in Yemen including capital Sanaa and Houthida port. As per the reports which is coming from the Houthis sources, there were airstrikes, there were missiles, then there were other means through which they were attacked and according to the Central Command statement, these attacks were coordinated with several other countries including Bahrain in the region where the Sankom headquarters are. So of course this attack though there is no report as yet about if there are any casualties or there are any military targets which were attacked apart from the fact that there are reports coming that there have been attacked carried out. There are reports coming that Joe Biden has basically confirmed that these attacks were carried out under his instructions and there are also reports coming that a large number of US congressmen have basically objected to these attacks pointing the fact that these were carried out without the approval from the congress which is as per the US law which is required. Nevertheless these attacks as per the Sankom statement these attacks were carried out in retaliation to the Houthis carrying out attacks in the Red Sea since October 17. Strangely they have claimed that these attacks are not linked to operation Prosperity Garchan which is basically a maritime alliance particularly made to counter the Houthi attacks in the Red Sea but that is a strange statement which basically said that there is no link. This should also be seen in the context of the on Wednesday there was a resolution passed by the United Nations Security Council without the consent of two permanent members which is Russia and China who had objected the drafting of the resolution which basically demanded the Houthis to seize their attacks in Red Sea and return one of the ships which they had captured earlier in I think in November. So in that context these attacks have been carried out. Abdul what does the situation look like for Yemen because we know that there has been some kind of a peace process after many many years of very brutal warfare. It was not a full-fledged peace of course or an agreement had not been signed but it's not wrong to say that maybe there was a bit of stability coming in and also allowing the possibility of aid to come in as well and now again the whole situation seems to be at risk. Exactly if you see the statement issued by Saudi Arabia which is considered to be a close military ally of the United States it has said that of course it supports the freedom of navigation but it does not support the attacks which were carried out in Yemen. This should be seen in the context as you rightly pointed out that after more than eight years of war in Yemen led by Saudi coalition there was some kind of stability and peace returning since last year when there was some kind of understanding of kind of undeclared ceasefire and peace negotiations between the Houthis and Saudi backed forces in Yemen also with the Saudis directly. So this of course has kind of which basically gave hope that Yemen which was destroyed due to the war which became as per the UN world's biggest humanitarian crisis in the last century this basically gave hope that there will be some kind of revival some kind of reconstruction some kind of restoration of peace and order in that country. But of course Houthis were also looking forward to it but due to the war in Gaza and due to the commitments which Houthis have claimed to the Palestinian issue of course they had to due to their ideological commitments due to their historical links and other factors of course they were basically in support of Palestinians in what is happening to the Palestinians in Gaza by the Israelis with the US support and that basically has been made an excuse by the US and UK to basically relaunch and strike and this will of course if this continues because Houthis have claimed that they will retaliate to this attack if this basically continues the way it is continuing the provocations caused by US it may lead to emergence of war there reemergence of war and destruction in Yemen and this will have a regional repercussion already because one should remember that what US did basically is basically violating its own statements which it was making since the beginning of war in Gaza that the war should not escalate it should not have regional angle and so on and so forth but this is the attack carried out on Friday basically is the most serious violation of the US dictates US own commitments of not letting the war spread out to the region and this will have of course very bad impact on the people in Yemen but the fact is that Yemenis are also not willing to back down at this moment given their commitments to the Palestinian cause. Thank you so much Abdel for that update. A survey by the Arab Centre for Research and Policy Studies has thrown up some interesting results the survey conducted in 16 countries with over 8000 respondents reveals widespread support for Palestinian resistance and severe unhappiness with the actions of the US and other western powers. The results are also a challenge to the governments of these countries which are sought to strike a balance between the sentiments of their people and the instructions and interests of the US. We go back to Abdel for more. Abdel welcome back interesting results from the survey and that were a time when the hearings are taking place against Israel in the International Court of Justice give us an outline of what are some of the major conclusions. Well some of them some of the conclusions are really interesting of course some of them some of those things we already can assume that most of the Arabs basically support the Palestinian cause in fact the service is around 90% of the respondents 92% of the respondents claim that the Palestinian cause is an Arab cause not only a cause basically of Palestinians this basically also it basically reverses the narration which was created in the last few years that the most of the Arab people moved away from Palestinian issue and they have much become much more centered to the local issues or the issues which related to their own states or the nations and that is one basic finding it says that also it says that more than 90% of the people believe or almost 90% of Arab people across the 16 Arab countries where this survey was conducted except for Syria and UAE two major countries apart from and Bahrain of course rest of the Arab countries most of the Arab countries were part of this survey it shows that around 90% of the population believes that what happened on October 7 Hamas and Arab Palestinian other Palestinian resistance groups carrying out attack inside Israel what they call Operation Al-Aqsa flood was a legitimate response a legitimate act against the decades of occupation Israeli occupation their criminal seas of Gaza and the day to day kind of attempts to humiliate Palestinians not only by attacking Al-Aqsa but also attacking their homes and their other fields and so on and so forth so that basically again busts myth that the most of the Arab world has basically bought the narrative that what Palestinians are doing is an act of terrorism so this also creates a kind of settles that particular debate into some extent one major finding of course is related to how most of the Arab people oppose to any kind of recognition of Israel and they're opposed to vehemently opposed to the normalization and particularly with Israel particularly this number of people opposed to normalization has increased many fold since the war in Gaza began because the Arab centers does an annual survey from 2011 onwards and it claims that this is the highest percentage of people saying that they are opposed to normalization with Israel than any year before for example in 2022 just to quote one example around 67% of the sorry 38% of the Saudis were opposed to any kind of normalization with Israel but in this latest survey around 68% people say that they are completely opposed to any kind of normalization overall figures have reached around 94% in some of the countries particularly Morocco and Egypt where there was kind of earlier there was a declining percent as a people opposed to normalization now there was a sudden jump and more than 94% 93% people in different countries have basically opposed any kind of normalization with Israel so these are some of the findings of course there are other interesting findings related to how most of the people in the Arab world see that basically that the Israeli attempts to kind of portray Palestinians as terrorists or US media in particular portraying them as terrorists as false narrative as biased narrative and does not buy to the bombardment of information which comes with their ideological agenda also quick question in terms of how do you think the governments in this region have been sort of responding to not only what is happening internally within their societies but also to the developments have they sort of you know managed to sort of address these concerns these very legitimate concerns are they still playing a kind of game in between where they are also adapting to what Israel and the US want it depends how we see it if we see the responses of Arab countries in isolation of course we will see that the amount of popular mobilization in the streets and the kind of sentiment which the surveys indicate shows that of course most of the governments have not responded to these concerns raised by the people but if we see it in the larger context we will see their behavior compare their behavior with what happened in the past few decades when most of these Arab countries have completely abandoned all Palestinian most of the Palestinian issues and they hardly responded to the repeated offensive Israeli offensive inside Gaza every year almost every year since 2005 they hardly responded by Israel on Gaza which led to massive deterioration of the living conditions for most of the 2 million Gazans more than 2 million Gazans their response of course has much but has been much more much more you can say positive in that sense if you see most of them have kind of completely rejected all claims Israeli right to self-defense made by US despite the pressures put by US Blinken has visited the region 4 times since October 7th they have basically supported all the calls for kind of genocide investigation for example Arab League has basically came out in support of the South Africa's case in the ICJ which is ongoing as we are speaking which given the fact that a large number of Arab countries are very close to US and still they are doing all these things we should see it in that context that because of the and this is this one needs to highlight because of the changing geopolitical scenario in the reason and the global politics because of the changing you can say move towards multilateralism the Arab countries have got some kind of space where they can now assert their independent foreign policy and that is the only thing which matters because there is a growing trend that most of the Arab countries are now seeing a space to kind of respond to their popular demands vis-a-vis Palestinians more positively Abdul thank you so much for that analysis that's all we have in today's episode we will be back with a fresh episode tomorrow in the meanwhile do visit our website peoplesdispatch.org and follow us on all the social media platforms