Yesterday, as the IDF continued its military operations in Gaza, Qatari and Egyptian mediators met with Hamas representatives in Doha to discuss proposals for the release of hostages in exchange for a return to the cease-fire. The day before, the American negotiator Steve Witkoff offered his own proposals—also based on discussion with the Qataris—to the Israeli government.

Even if Hamas does agree to some sort of deal, it would almost certainly not involve the release of all hostages, and thus only be an opening for further negotiations. It is therefore of the utmost importance that both Washington and Jerusalem learn the lessons of the various failures, and few successes, of the diplomatic efforts since the war began. Eyal Tsir Cohen, who served as an Israeli negotiator during the first year of the war, and Jesse R. Weinberg explain what those lessons are:

If the goal is to weaken Hamas and bring hostages home, U.S. policymakers must recognize that any signal of Israeli restraint without parallel pressure on Hamas only emboldens the group.

During [previous] negotiations, a surge in Israel’s offensive before Ramadan in the spring of 2024 could have brought Hamas to a breaking point and led to a breakthrough in the negotiations. Instead, in direct contravention to Israel’s combat doctrine which places at its epicenter a quick and offensive approach, as well as the strategy laid out by the prime minister, Israel was forced to pull back as American pressure and diplomatic considerations limited Israel’s room to maneuver. Increased pressure at this critical juncture could have helped bridge gaps in negotiations and reach strategically reasonable prices for both the Israeli public and government.

If Washington is serious about preventing future hostage crises, it must ensure that its diplomatic efforts do not become Hamas’s most valuable weapon. Effective negotiations with terror organizations are not built on goodwill or rhetoric alone. They require the consistent application of leverage—primarily through sustained military pressure and credible threats of escalation.

Indeed, such an approach would likely have been more effective at fulfilling the Biden administration’s goal of securing the return of the hostages and minimizing Palestinian civilian deaths.

While I’ve seen much speculation—some reasonable and well informed, some quite the opposite—about why Jerusalem chose Friday morning to begin its campaign against Iran, the most obvious explanation seems to be the most convincing. First, 60 days had passed since President Trump warned that Tehran had 60 days to reach an agreement with the U.S. over its nuclear program. Second, Israeli intelligence was convinced that Iran was too close to developing nuclear weapons to delay military action any longer. Edward Luttwak explains why Israel was wise to attack:

Iran was adding more and more centrifuges in increasingly vast facilities at enormous expense, which made no sense at all if the aim was to generate energy. . . . It might be hoped that Israel’s own nuclear weapons could deter an Iranian nuclear attack against its own territory. But a nuclear Iran would dominate the entire Middle East, including Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain, with which Israel has full diplomatic relations, as well as Saudi Arabia with which Israel hopes to have full relations in the near future.

Luttwak also considers the military feats the IDF and Mossad have accomplished in the past few days:

To reach all [its] targets, Israel had to deal with the range-payload problem that its air force first overcame in 1967, when it destroyed the air forces of three Arab states in a single day. . . . This time, too, impossible solutions were found for the range problem, including the use of 65-year-old airliners converted into tankers (Boeing is years later in delivering its own). To be able to use its short-range F-16s, Israel developed the “Rampage” air-launched missile, which flies upward on a ballistic trajectory, gaining range by gliding down to the target. That should make accuracy impossible—but once again, Israeli developers overcame the odds.