In 2018, a Saudi-led Arab coalition, after three years of fighting against the Houthis in Yemen, was closing in on the strategically crucial port city of Hudaydah. Rather than encouraging the coalition to take the city and come closer to ending the war, the coalition’s Western allies pressured it into accepting an agreement that left the city in Houthi hands while obtaining only symbolic gestures in return. The Biden administration, entertaining a fantasy of “ending the war,” three years later cut off arms sales to the Saudis. As a result, Yemen’s suffering continues unabated, and the Houthis can now fire ballistic missiles at Israel and stifle global commerce.

Ari Heistein and Nathaniel Rabkin fear that the U.S. is going to try to force a similar plan on Israel before it attacks Rafah, with equally catastrophic results:

The parallels with Hamas in Rafah are clear and ominous. . . . Hamas is perfectly willing to create a humanitarian catastrophe as it defends its chokehold on Gaza—but allowing it to keep control means submitting to its forever war against the existence of Israel, and its constant efforts to humiliate the West and moderate Arab states. Any agreement with Hamas to facilitate some kind of compromise over the Rafah crossing is likely to turn out like the Hudaydah agreement, a fig leaf for continued control by militants who prioritize war above all else, and treat humanitarian concerns as an opportunity for profiteering and propaganda.

Hamas and the Houthis . . . are groups that have mortgaged all of their prestige on unwinnable and extremely brutal wars. . . . Before signing on to a ceasefire with groups like these, we need to see a “ceasefire” the way they do—as a temporary pause until they can gather more forces, develop more weapons, devise new tactics, and then break the ceasefire with a surprise attack, to initiate yet another battle in their campaigns of conquest.

Roger Zakheim believes the U.S. has taken the wrong approach to the Israel-Hamas war, and to the fate of the five Americans currently being held in Gaza:

For more than seven months the secretary of state and director of central intelligence, along with other senior officials, have treated the Gaza war as if it were a conflict between state actors, employing shuttle diplomacy and negotiating with both sides. They have indulged in the conceit that you can negotiate with a terrorist organization by treating it as an equal party. The Biden administration has continued to allow Qatar to give Hamas’s political leadership sanctuary in its five-star headquarters in Doha, on the theory that if they can talk with Hamas leaders, a resolution is more likely.

It is long overdue for the United States to shift the paradigm. Over the past twenty years, the United States has developed an array of intelligence, economic, and military tools and techniques that can pressure and destroy terrorist networks. They should be deployed against Hamas.

We should also unleash our military and intelligence community’s world-class targeting and strike capability that killed Osama bin Laden and Qassem Suleimani, and has rescued hundreds of hostages held by terrorists. . . . Instead of fully utilizing this exquisite capability, only a handful of military advisers are whispering advice to Israeli counterparts in Tel Aviv. . . . As one IDF special operator told me, “Your Delta forces would be a game changer.”