Almost since its creation, the UN has been involved in the Arab-Israel conflict, yet it has accomplished next to nothing in helping to solving it. Indeed, writes Mudar Zahran, it has only exacerbated it:

The UN, for six decades, has failed to produce any practical or feasible solution to the Arab-‎Israeli conflict, despite the billions of dollars that the U.S. government has given to the UN for ‎the purpose of advancing peace. Even worse, UN policies and practices have turned ‎[my] Palestinian brethren into lifelong refugees through the UN Relief and ‎Works Agency (UNRWA), whose largest donor is the U.S.

It is no secret that UNRWA has given a de-facto green light to Arab governments, including ‎that of Jordan, to abuse, isolate, and starve Palestinians so they would never integrate into their host countries and never ‎forget about Palestine. . . .

At the same time, the UN has always complicated the relationship between Palestinians and ‎Israelis by highlighting even the most minor unrest between ‎the two. This pattern of behavior on the UN’s part has expanded the conflict and killed the potential for peace.‎

Even worse, the UN has . . . attacked and compromised economic progress between Palestinians and Israelis by endorsing the boycott of Israeli ‎products, which results in [Palestinians] losing employment opportunities at Israeli ‎companies. This pushes Palestinians toward ‎hopelessness and radicalization and further kills the potential for peace.‎ . . .

The world must realize that we, the people of the region, Arabs and Israelis, can solve our problems without outside influence or UN involvement.

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.