Hostage expert explains why Israel's hostage crisis is uniquely challenging

Jared Genser, a Washington, D.C.-based international human rights lawyer, has extracted hostages and political prisoners from some of the world's worst dictatorships - usually in one-off deals following years of negotiation and on a rare occasion involving large sums of money.

But he's concerned that piecemeal dealmaking with rogue actors encourages more kidnappings. So, Genser is proposing a new multilateral approach to fighting hostage-taking by nations like Iran, Russia, China, Venezuela, and Syria: a pact, like Article 5 of the NATO treaty, that would pledge signatories to taken collective...