The current strategy of Palestinian leaders and their abetters abroad is to try to obtain Palestinian statehood by various forms of coercion—for Hamas, violence; for Mahmoud Abbas, diplomatic pressure; for European foes of Israel, unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state by European governments. These attempts are all doomed to fail because of military, economic, and geographical realities, writes Haviv Rettig Gur. If Palestinians want a state, they will have to convince an already sympathetic Israeli public that they are genuinely interested in a two-state solution, not a two-step plan to annihilate the Jewish state.

Israelis don’t need to be convinced that occupation is immoral. They live in a democracy bordered by dictatorships and are not blind to the fact that the Palestinians of the West Bank don’t elect the Israeli military governor who rules there. Yet recent elections have shown that Israelis are willing to pull out only under one condition: a convincing guarantee that it can be done safely.

Palestinians will not gain independence until the Israeli electorate’s concerns are seriously addressed. Israel is not the fragile political structure that Palestinians or their supporters imagine. It is a nation, a distinct culture and identity, speaking a language spoken nowhere else. It has two million schoolchildren, and it is grimly determined to fight any war it must in their defense. Whatever its mistakes, Israel isn’t going anywhere. It can afford to be disliked, and even boycotted, when the alternative is Hamas controlling the highlands that loom over its tiny but densely populated heartland.

Last Tuesday, the Houthis—the faction now ruling much of Yemen—said that they intend to renew attacks on international shipping through the Red and Arabian Seas. They had for the most part paused their attacks following the January 19 Israel-Hamas cease-fire, but their presence has continued to scare away maritime traffic near the Yemeni coast, with terrible consequences for the global economy.

The U.S. responded on Saturday by initiating strikes on Houthi missile depots, command-and-control centers, and propaganda outlets, and has promised that the attacks will continue for days, if not weeks. The Houthis responded by launching drones, and possibly missiles, at American naval ships, apparently without result. Another missile fired from Yemen struck the Sinai, but was likely aimed at Israel. As Ari Heistein has written in Mosaic, it may take a sustained and concerted effort to stop the Houthis, who have high tolerance for casualties—but this is a start. Ron Ben-Yishai provides some context:

The goal is to punish the Houthis for directly targeting Western naval vessels in the Red Sea while also exerting indirect pressure on Tehran over its nuclear program. . . . While the Biden administration did conduct airstrikes against the Houthis, it refrained from a proactive military campaign, fearing a wider regional war. However, following the collapse of Iran’s axis—including Hizballah’s heavy losses in Lebanon and the fall of the Assad regime in Syria—the Trump administration appears unafraid of such an escalation.

Iran, the thinking goes, will also get the message that the U.S. isn’t afraid to use force, or risk the consequences of retaliation—and will keep this in mind as it considers negotiations over its nuclear program. Tamir Hayman adds:

The Houthis are the last proxy of the Shiite axis that have neither reassessed their actions nor restrained their weapons. Throughout the campaign against the Yemenite terrorist organization, the U.S.-led coalition has made operational mistakes: Houthi regime infrastructure was not targeted; the organization’s leaders were not eliminated; no sustained operational continuity was maintained—only actions to remove immediate threats; no ground operations took place, not even special-forces missions; and Iran has not paid a price for its proxy’s actions.

But if this does not stop the Houthis, it will project weakness—not just toward Hamas but primarily toward Iran—and Trump’s power diplomacy will be seen as hollow. The true test is one of output, not input. The only question that matters is not how many strikes the U.S. carries out, but whether the Red Sea reopens to all vessels. We will wait and see—for now, things look brighter than they did before.