A missile from Yemen halts flights in Israel hours before vote on intensifying Gaza war

BEN-GURION INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, Israel (AP) — A missile launched by Iranian-backed rebels in Yemen briefly halted flights and commuter traffic at Israel's main international airport on Sunday after its impact near an access road caused panic among passengers.

The attack on Ben-Gurion International Airport came hours before Israeli Cabinet ministers were set to vote on whether to intensify military operations in Gaza. The army was calling up tens of thousands of reserves, Israel's chief of staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir said.

Israel's army said it was the first time a missile struck the airport grounds since the war in Gaza began. The military said initial findings indicated the likely cause was a technical issue with the interceptor.

Israel’s paramedic service Magen David Adom said four people were lightly wounded.

Multiple international airlines canceled or postponed flights. The war with Hamas in Gaza and then Hezbollah in Lebanon had led a wave of airlines to suspend flights to Israel. Many had resumed in recent months.

The Houthis have targeted Israel throughout the war in solidarity with Palestinians, raising their profile at home and internationally as the last member of Iran's self-described “Axis of Resistance” capable of launching regular attacks on Israel. The U.S. military under President Donald Trump has launched an intensified campaign of daily airstrikes targeting the Houthis since March 15.

Early Monday, the rebels issued a warning to airlines that they would carry out "repeated targeting" of Ben-Gurion, Israel's main gateway to the world.

International carriers should “cancel all their flights to the airports of the criminal Israeli enemy, in order to safeguard the safety of their aircraft and passengers,” the Houthis said.

Houthi military spokesman Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree said in a video statement that the group fired a hypersonic ballistic missile at the airport.

Houthi rebels have fired at Israel since the war with Gaza began on Oct. 7, 2023. The missiles have mostly been intercepted, although some have penetrated Israel's missile defense systems, causing damage.

Israel has struck back against the rebels in Yemen.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the U.S. was supporting Israeli operations against the Houthis. “It’s not bang, bang and we’re done, but there will be bangs,” he said. In a later statement, he added Israel would respond to the Houthis “AND, at a time and place of our choosing, to their Iranian terror masters.”

Netanyahu said the security Cabinet was meeting Sunday evening to vote on plans to expand the fighting in Gaza.

“We will operate in additional areas and we will destroy all of the infrastructure above and below ground,” Zamir said.

Far-right Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir told Israeli Army Radio he wanted to see a “powerful” expansion of the war, and demanded that Israel bomb “the food and electricity supplies” in Gaza.

An 8-week ceasefire with the Hamas militant group allowed more aid into Gaza and freed some Israeli hostages, but it collapsed in March when Israel resumed strikes. The military has since captured swaths of the coastal enclave. Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed, according to local health officials.

Israel in March halted the entry of goods into Gaza as part of efforts to pressure Hamas to negotiate on Israel’s terms for a new ceasefire. That has plunged the territory of 2.3 million people into what is believed to be the worst humanitarian crisis of the war. Hunger has been widespread, and shortages have set off looting.

In a confrontation over efforts to support Gaza, Malta's prime minister, Robert Abela, said his country had offered to send a marine surveyor to look into the damage caused to a ship said to be carrying aid and organized by pro-Palestinian activists. Abela said the captain refused.

The activists said Friday their vessel was struck by drones, blaming Israel. The ship remained in international waters off Malta. The Israeli military has not commented.

Israeli airstrikes killed at least seven Palestinians, including parents and their children, ages 2 and 4, in southern and central Gaza, Palestinian medics said. The military had no comment.

The military said two soldiers were killed in combat in Gaza, bringing the number killed since fighting resumed in March to six.

The war in Gaza began when Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostages. Israel says 59 captives remain in Gaza, although about 35 are believed to be dead.

Israel's offensive has killed more than 52,000 people in Gaza, many of them women and children, according to Palestinian health officials, who do not distinguish between combatants and civilians in their count.

The fighting has displaced more than 90% of Gaza's population, often multiple times.

Goldenberg reported from Tel Aviv, Israel. Associated Press writers Natalie Melzer in Nahariya, Israel; Samy Magdy in Cairo; Melanie Lidman in Jerusalem, Kevin Schembri in Birkirkara, Malta, and Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed to this report.

Follow AP’s war coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war

An Israeli army tank maneuvers in the Gaza Strip is seen from southern Israel, Sunday, May 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

A flare fired by the Israeli army over the Gaza Strip is seen from southern Israel, Sunday, May 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

Buildings that were destroyed during the Israeli ground and air operations in the Gaza Strip are seen from southern Israel on Sunday, May 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

An Israeli army tank maneuvers in the Gaza Strip is seen from southern Israel, Sunday, May 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

Destroyed buildings in the Gaza Strip, seen from southern Israel, Sunday, May 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

Israeli security forces inspect the site where the Israeli military said a projectile fired by Yemen's Houthi rebels landed in the area of Ben Gurion International Airport near Tel Aviv, Israel, on Sunday, May 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)

Israeli security forces inspect a crater at the site where the Israeli military said a projectile fired by Yemen's Houthi rebels landed in the area of Ben Gurion International Airport near Tel Aviv, Israel, on Sunday, May 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)

Israeli security forces inspect the site where the Israeli military said a projectile fired by Yemen's Houthi rebels landed in the area of Ben Gurion International Airport near Tel Aviv, Israel, on Sunday, May 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)

Abdel Rahman Sinwar, left, carries the body of his infant son, Yahia Sinwar, while the child's grandfather carries the body of his one-year-old grandson, Seif Sinwar, both killed in an Israeli army strike in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip, on Saturday, May 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)

Palestinians look at a house targeted by an Israeli army strike in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip, Saturday, May 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Becky Pepper-Jackson finished third in the discus throw in West Virginia last year though she was in just her first year of high school. Now a 15-year-old sophomore, Pepper-Jackson is aware that her upcoming season could be her last.

West Virginia has banned transgender girls like Pepper-Jackson from competing in girls and women's sports, and is among the more than two dozen states with similar laws. Though the West Virginia law has been blocked by lower courts, the outcome could be different at the conservative-dominated Supreme Court, which has allowed multiple restrictions on transgender people to be enforced in the past year.

The justices are hearing arguments Tuesday in two cases over whether the sports bans violate the Constitution or the landmark federal law known as Title IX that prohibits sex discrimination in education. The second case comes from Idaho, where college student Lindsay Hecox challenged that state's law.

Decisions are expected by early summer.

President Donald Trump's Republican administration has targeted transgender Americans from the first day of his second term, including ousting transgender people from the military and declaring that gender is immutable and determined at birth.

Pepper-Jackson has become the face of the nationwide battle over the participation of transgender girls in athletics that has played out at both the state and federal levels as Republicans have leveraged the issue as a fight for athletic fairness for women and girls.

“I think it’s something that needs to be done,” Pepper-Jackson said in an interview with The Associated Press that was conducted over Zoom. “It’s something I’m here to do because ... this is important to me. I know it’s important to other people. So, like, I’m here for it.”

She sat alongside her mother, Heather Jackson, on a sofa in their home just outside Bridgeport, a rural West Virginia community about 40 miles southwest of Morgantown, to talk about a legal fight that began when she was a middle schooler who finished near the back of the pack in cross-country races.

Pepper-Jackson has grown into a competitive discus and shot put thrower. In addition to the bronze medal in the discus, she finished eighth among shot putters.

She attributes her success to hard work, practicing at school and in her backyard, and lifting weights. Pepper-Jackson has been taking puberty-blocking medication and has publicly identified as a girl since she was in the third grade, though the Supreme Court's decision in June upholding state bans on gender-affirming medical treatment for minors has forced her to go out of state for care.

Her very improvement as an athlete has been cited as a reason she should not be allowed to compete against girls.

“There are immutable physical and biological characteristic differences between men and women that make men bigger, stronger, and faster than women. And if we allow biological males to play sports against biological females, those differences will erode the ability and the places for women in these sports which we have fought so hard for over the last 50 years,” West Virginia's attorney general, JB McCuskey, said in an AP interview. McCuskey said he is not aware of any other transgender athlete in the state who has competed or is trying to compete in girls or women’s sports.

Despite the small numbers of transgender athletes, the issue has taken on outsize importance. The NCAA and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committees banned transgender women from women's sports after Trump signed an executive order aimed at barring their participation.

The public generally is supportive of the limits. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in October 2025 found that about 6 in 10 U.S. adults “strongly” or “somewhat” favored requiring transgender children and teenagers to only compete on sports teams that match the sex they were assigned at birth, not the gender they identify with, while about 2 in 10 were “strongly” or “somewhat” opposed and about one-quarter did not have an opinion.

About 2.1 million adults, or 0.8%, and 724,000 people age 13 to 17, or 3.3%, identify as transgender in the U.S., according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.

Those allied with the administration on the issue paint it in broader terms than just sports, pointing to state laws, Trump administration policies and court rulings against transgender people.

"I think there are cultural, political, legal headwinds all supporting this notion that it’s just a lie that a man can be a woman," said John Bursch, a lawyer with the conservative Christian law firm Alliance Defending Freedom that has led the legal campaign against transgender people. “And if we want a society that respects women and girls, then we need to come to terms with that truth. And the sooner that we do that, the better it will be for women everywhere, whether that be in high school sports teams, high school locker rooms and showers, abused women’s shelters, women’s prisons.”

But Heather Jackson offered different terms to describe the effort to keep her daughter off West Virginia's playing fields.

“Hatred. It’s nothing but hatred,” she said. "This community is the community du jour. We have a long history of isolating marginalized parts of the community.”

Pepper-Jackson has seen some of the uglier side of the debate on display, including when a competitor wore a T-shirt at the championship meet that said, “Men Don't Belong in Women's Sports.”

“I wish these people would educate themselves. Just so they would know that I’m just there to have a good time. That’s it. But it just, it hurts sometimes, like, it gets to me sometimes, but I try to brush it off,” she said.

One schoolmate, identified as A.C. in court papers, said Pepper-Jackson has herself used graphic language in sexually bullying her teammates.

Asked whether she said any of what is alleged, Pepper-Jackson said, “I did not. And the school ruled that there was no evidence to prove that it was true.”

The legal fight will turn on whether the Constitution's equal protection clause or the Title IX anti-discrimination law protects transgender people.

The court ruled in 2020 that workplace discrimination against transgender people is sex discrimination, but refused to extend the logic of that decision to the case over health care for transgender minors.

The court has been deluged by dueling legal briefs from Republican- and Democratic-led states, members of Congress, athletes, doctors, scientists and scholars.

The outcome also could influence separate legal efforts seeking to bar transgender athletes in states that have continued to allow them to compete.

If Pepper-Jackson is forced to stop competing, she said she will still be able to lift weights and continue playing trumpet in the school concert and jazz bands.

“It will hurt a lot, and I know it will, but that’s what I’ll have to do,” she said.

Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Becky Pepper-Jackson poses for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

The Supreme Court stands is Washington, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

FILE - Protestors hold signs during a rally at the state capitol in Charleston, W.Va., on March 9, 2023. (AP Photo/Chris Jackson, file)