On Sunday, Prime Minister Netanyahu told negotiators to return to Doha to continue negotiations for the release of hostages. That Hamas has recently appeared more willing to come around to Israeli demands shows how greatly Western governments have misunderstood the war in Gaza, and how much Israel has gained by ignoring their counsel, as the Israeli foreign minister Israel Katz explains in an interview by Elliot Kaufman:

After months of rejecting Israeli ceasefire proposals and holding out for more concessions, Hamas has begun to offer concessions of its own. Israel is closer than ever to freeing many of its remaining hostages, and it has gained the leverage to demand terms that protect the strategic gains of the war.

If you believe the media drumbeat—that Israel’s war effort is futile, its strategy absent, and its political isolation growing—it’s impossible to account for the breakthrough. Why, after months of contemptuous stalling, did Hamas begin to bend?

“Two reasons,” says Israel Katz, Israel’s foreign minister, in an interview at the Journal’s office. “One, they understand now that there will be no ceasefire without a hostage deal. Two, the IDF is acting aggressively against the terrorists in Gaza. Especially important was entering Rafah,” Hamas’s stronghold at the southern end of the Strip.

Israeli intelligence confirms it. “We see now the signs that there is a lot of pressure from the military arm of Hamas. They push the leaders in the hotels outside”—Hamas’s politicians, who live in luxury in Qatar—“to achieve an agreement. It wasn’t like that before,” Mr. Katz says. Hamas’s leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, “didn’t want a deal before. Not even when we offered everything.”

It shouldn’t be a surprise that pressure on Hamas could yield gains in negotiations. Yet for months Western powers took the opposite approach, pressuring Israel to end the war and leave Hamas victorious. They called for an “immediate ceasefire,” increasingly delinked from a hostage deal. . . . No critics recanted, but the pressure on Israel quietly diminished.

For more than a year, the Iran-backed Houthis have been launching drones and missiles at ships traversing the Red Sea, as well as at Israeli territory, in support of Hamas. This development has drastically curtailed shipping through the Suez Canal and the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, driving up trade prices. This week, the Trump administration began an extensive bombing campaign against the Houthis in an effort to reopen that crucial waterway. Burcu Ozcelik highlights another benefit of this action:

The administration has a broader geopolitical agenda—one that includes countering China’s economic leverage, particularly Beijing’s reliance on Iranian oil. By targeting the Houthis, the United States is not only safeguarding vital shipping lanes but also exerting pressure on the Iran-China energy nexus, a key component of Beijing’s strategic posture in the region.

China was the primary destination for up to 90 percent of Iran’s oil exports in 2024, underscoring the deepening economic ties between Beijing and Tehran despite U.S. sanctions. By helping fill Iranian coffers, China aids Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in financing proxies like the Houthis. Since October of last year, notable U.S. Treasury announcements have revealed covert links between China and the Houthis.

Striking the Houthis could trigger broader repercussions—not least by disrupting the flow of Iranian oil to China. While difficult to confirm, it is conceivable and has been reported, that the Houthis may have received financial or other forms of compensation from China (such as Chinese-made military components) in exchange for allowing freedom of passage for China-affiliated vessels in the Red Sea.