While numerous commentators have described the ever-growing wave of murderous attacks on Israeli citizens as a third Palestinian intifada, Kobi Michael, Udi Dekel, and Assaf Orion argue that the term is not appropriate. They also have some suggestions about what Israel can do to prevent an actual third intifada:

At this stage, the stabbings and vehicle attacks are carried out by individual terrorists, and the shooting attacks are usually [the product of] local initiatives, with most of the Palestinian population uninvolved in the escalation processes. The masses have not taken to the streets, and no popular uprising—[the literal meaning of] intifada—is under way. The trend is one of transition from the logic of institutional operations to the logic of individual, local, and decentralized operations, based on the idea that the response to distress is independent, personal, or local. This is how a phenomenon of large-scale activity in many locales is created, similar to the process of disintegration of whole states in the Middle East in recent years. . . .

[In response], Israel must continue the security coordination with the Palestinian security agencies, and present unequivocal demands regarding those in Palestinian Authority (PA) territory engaged in terrorism and violence. Together with these coordination efforts, Israel should step up its campaign against terrorist groups in PA territory. It is also important to allow a number of Palestinian workers into Israel, as has recently been done, and not to halt the easing of restrictions on movement and trade. An arbitrary and indiscriminate hard line toward the Palestinian population will not serve the Israeli security interest, and is liable to increase the number of flash points.

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.