It might, write Jonathan Schanzer and Grant Rumley, even though neither Israel nor much of the Hamas ruling clique wants one:

The wild card [is] the internal fissures within Hamas. . . . [Hamas] has multiple patrons with competing regional agendas and is irredeemably fractured as a result. The group’s Iran-backed military wing, its West Bank leaders, its Gaza leaders, and political-wing figures in places like Qatar, Turkey, and Egypt are far from aligned.

Unilateral decisions taken by one or more of these figures can have deadly implications. Last summer, it was Hamas’s military leadership in Turkey that ordered the abduction and murder of three Israeli teenagers in the West Bank. That operation sparked an Israeli reprisal that soon led to escalation and then all-out war. . . .

An uneasy calm exists now between Hamas and Israel, punctuated by the predictable cantankerous rhetoric and an occasional rocket testing. None of that has come close to sparking another conflict, primarily because neither side really wants one. But what Israelis and Palestinians want may not matter now that actors like Mohammed Deif, [the leader of Hamas’s military wing in Gaza], are back in the rocket-making business, digging tunnels for the next round.

While it is commendable that administrators of several universities finally called upon police to crack down on violent and disruptive anti-Israel protests, the actions they have taken may be insufficient. At Columbia, demonstrators reestablished their encampment on the main quad after it had been cleared by the police, and the university seems reluctant to use force again. The school also decided to hold classes remotely until the end of the semester. Such moves, whatever their merits, do nothing to fix the factors that allowed campuses to become hotbeds of pro-Hamas activism in the first place. The editors of National Review examine how things go to this point:

Since the 10/7 massacre, Columbia’s Jewish students have been forced to endure routine calls for their execution. It shouldn’t have taken the slaughter, rape, and brutalization of Israeli Jews to expose chants like “Globalize the intifada” and “Death to the Zionist state” as calls for violence, but the university refused to intervene on behalf of its besieged students. When an Israeli student was beaten with a stick outside Columbia’s library, it occasioned little soul-searching from faculty. Indeed, it served only as the impetus to establish an “Anti-Semitism Task Force,” which subsequently expressed “serious concerns” about the university’s commitment to enforcing its codes of conduct against anti-Semitic violators.

But little was done. Indeed, as late as last month the school served as host to speakers who praised the 10/7 attacks and even “hijacking airplanes” as “important tactics that the Palestinian resistance have engaged in.”

The school’s lackadaisical approach created a permission structure to menace and harass Jewish students, and that’s what happened. . . . Now is the time finally to do something about this kind of harassment and associated acts of trespass and disorder. Yale did the right thing when police cleared out an encampment [on Monday]. But Columbia remains a daily reminder of what happens when freaks and haters are allowed to impose their will on campus.