As the fighting in Gaza continues, the question of who is winning remains. In an in-depth report with elaborate graphics, CNN argued recently that the IDF had not made as much progress against Hamas as it claims. While the report does contain some outright falsehoods, it is better researched and contains less distortion than much coverage of the conflict. Yet it ultimately is of a piece with another CNN article from April about how “Israel has no viable plan for how to end the war” and isn’t achieving its goals.

Key to CNN’s argument is the fact that Hamas’s battalions are reconstituting themselves. Yaakov Amidror explains the flaw in this reasoning:

Suppose a Hamas battalion consisted of 1,000 fighters divided into five companies. After a fierce battle, the IDF killed, severely wounded, or captured about 700 of them. Additionally, the battalion commander, one of his deputies, and four company commanders were killed. During the battle, the IDF also eliminated the commander of the brigade to which the battalion belonged and destroyed the command centers from which the brigade commander, battalion commander, and company commanders operated.

After the IDF withdrew, 300 young Gazans were recruited into the battalion. . . . Not only is the battalion now smaller by a third, with only 600 fighters, but it also bears little resemblance to its former self: half of its members are completely untrained; most of its commanders are new and far less experienced than the previous leadership. It lacks brigade-level support both logistically and operationally, and it can no longer receive intelligence and fire support from the destroyed command centers.

While it may appear to be the same battalion, in reality, it is ten-times weaker.

Meanwhile, the New York Times, in a similar attempt to show that Israel is doing something wrong, makes the opposite argument: the IDF, it claims, “has achieved all that it can militarily in Gaza,” and must now stop fighting.

Here at Mosaic, we’ve published quite a lot about many Arab states, but one that’s barely received mention is Oman, located at the southeastern corner of the Arabian Peninsula. The sultanate has stayed out of the recent conflicts of the Midde East, and is known to have sub-rosa relations with Israel; high-ranking Israeli officials have visited the country clandestinely, or at least with little fanfare. For precisely this reason, Oman has held itself out as an intermediary and host for negotiations. The then-secret talks that proceeded the Obama administration’s fateful nuclear negotiations with Iran took place in Oman. Ari Heistein explains the similar, and troubling, role Muscat is playing with regard to the Houthis in neighboring Yemen:

For more than three decades, Oman has served in the role of mediator for the resolution of disputes in Yemen. . . . Oman allows for a Houthi office in the capital, Muscat, reportedly numbering around 100 personnel, to operate from its territory for the purported function of diplomatic engagement. It is worth asking why the Houthis require such a large delegation for such limited engagement and whether there is any real value to engaging with the Houthis.

Thus far, efforts to negotiate with the Houthis have yielded very limited outcomes, primarily resulting in concessions from the Saudi-led coalition and partial de-escalation when it has served the terror group’s interests. Rarely, if ever, have the Houthis fully abided by their commitments after signing off on international agreements. Presumably, such meager results could have been achieved through other constellations that are less beneficial to the recently redesignated foreign terrorist organization.

In contrast, the malign and destabilizing Houthi activities in Oman are significant. They include: shipment of Iranian and Chinese weapons components [and] military-grade communications equipment via Oman to the Houthis; the smuggling of senior officials in and out of Houthi-controlled areas via Oman; and financial activities conducted by Houthi shell corporations to consolidate the regime’s control over Yemen’s economy and subsidize the regime.

With this in mind, there is good reason to suspect that the Houthi presence in Oman does more harm than good.