According to a recent survey of Israeli and Palestinian public opinion, slim majorities—53 percent of Israelis and 51 percent of Palestinians—support a two-state solution in principle. But when pollsters add questions about the compromises needed to implement such a plan—over Jerusalem, security measures, the Temple Mount, and the return of refugees—the majorities quickly became minorities. Elliott Abrams looks at what the data mean for the future of the peace process:

Relentless optimists have long argued that Israel and the Palestinians are an inch apart and, as former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta put it in 2011, peace can be attained if they would “just get to the damn table.” Wrong. . . .

There are some other interesting findings [in this poll]. . . . [I]f a peace deal would mean peace with all the Arab states, 26 percent of Israeli Jews would change their negative view and vote yes. And . . . 29 percent of Palestinians would change their minds and accept a deal if the new Palestinian state and Jordan became a confederation. It’s interesting that the pollsters included this sensitive question, and remarkable that confederation with Jordan is viewed positively by so many Palestinians.

The old Palestinian Authority/PLO leadership in Ramallah doesn’t want to talk about such a possibility, for many reasons. Their gravy train would end if the Jordanian government ran things. And the idea that every Palestinian heart pines for sovereignty in a separate Palestinian state, which has been the key PLO position for decades, is obviously undermined by finding that Palestinians may be more pragmatic than their “leaders” about what the future may hold.

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.