The European Union has begun building settlements for Palestinians and Bedouin in a small strip of the West Bank known as the “E1 corridor.” As the Oslo Accords place this territory under direct Israeli control, these building projects—conducted under the shelter of diplomatic immunity and without proper permits—violate both Israeli and international law. Israel has finally moved to dismantle some of these structures, and now the EU is demanding compensation. David M. Weinberg comments:

[I]llegally established Palestinian villages and Bedouin shantytowns have slowly closed the corridor between Jerusalem and [nearby] Maaleh Adumim, where a major highway runs, crawling to within several meters from it. These illegal outposts steal electricity from the highway lights and water from Israeli pipelines.

Civil Administration data, presented last year to the Knesset’s subcommittee on Judea and Samaria, showed that 6,500 Palestinians were living in some 1,220 illegally built homes in the area, and the number undoubtedly has grown since then—thanks to the EU, [which] has poured perhaps €100 million into EU-emblazoned prefabs, EU-signed roads, and water and energy installations. [And not only] in E1, [but also] in Gush Etzion, in the South Hebron Hills, and even in the Negev. . . .

In short, the EU’s support of the Palestinians has graduated from passive diplomatic and financial assistance to subversive participation in the Palestinian Authority’s illegal construction ventures. The explicit EU intent is to erode Israeli control of [this portion of the West Bank] and east Jerusalem while promoting Palestinian territorial continuity leading to runaway Palestinian statehood. . . .

Belgium, Denmark, France, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Spain, and Sweden—members of the so-called “West Bank Protection Consortium,” a body that coordinates “humanitarian assistance” to Bedouin and Palestinian squatters in [the area]—are now demanding that Israel pay them compensation of more than €30,000 each. . . . First the EU builds illegal settlements in defiance of Israel, then it demands that Israel pay for these offenses when Israel acts against them.

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.