For nearly a month, residents of the Gaza Strip have had electricity for only a few hours a day, a situation that threatens a serious humanitarian crisis. The reason? The Palestinian Authority (PA), based in the West Bank, normally supplies Gaza with fuel for its power plant, but cut off the supply because the Strip’s rulers won’t pay up. Evelyn Gordon ask how peace is possible when Palestinian leaders are so contemptuous of their own people’s welfare:

Hamas isn’t willing to pay the hefty tax the Palestinian Authority imposes, while the PA isn’t willing to lower the tax. . . . [T]he only reason Gaza has enough power for even a few hours a day is that Israel has begun quietly picking up the tab for its other main power source, the electricity brought in on high-voltage wires from Israel. Until recently, the PA paid for that electricity, but last month, it announced it would no longer do so—and Hamas, needless to say, refuses to pick up the slack.

What about the West Bank? It is still getting uninterrupted power only because Israel agreed last year to forgive $130 million of the massive $530-million debt that Palestinian power companies there owe the Israel Electric Corporation. In other words, just like in Gaza, the Israeli taxpayer got stuck with the bill, because Israel cares more about Palestinians’ electricity needs than does either the PA or Hamas.

If all this were happening because both governments were simply broke, it would be understandable. But, in fact, both seem to have plenty of money for their top priority: incentivizing or directly funding anti-Israel terror. The PA, for instance, spent $129 million last year paying above-market salaries to convicted terrorists sitting in Israeli jails. . . . As for Hamas, it taxes every single item that enters Gaza, giving it revenue of hundreds of millions of dollars a year. The last annual budget it published, for 2014, came to $530 million. But of this, it spends an estimated $100 million a year on building its capacity to attack Israel. . . .

If any Palestinian government ever prioritizes its own people’s welfare over anti-Israel terror, it might be possible to talk about peace. But as long as killing Israelis is the top priority for both Hamas and Fatah, the idea that either Palestinian party would ever sign a peace agreement with Israel is fatuous.

If Iran succeeds in obtaining nuclear weapons, the war in Gaza, let alone the protests on college campuses, will seem like a minor complication. Jonathan Schachter fears that this danger could be much more imminent than decisionmakers in Jerusalem and Washington believe. In his view, Israel seems to be repeating the mistake that allowed it to be taken by surprise on Simchat Torah of 2023 and Yom Kippur of 1973: putting too much faith in an intelligence concept that could be wrong.

Israel and the United States apparently believe that despite Iran’s well-documented progress in developing capabilities necessary for producing and delivering nuclear weapons, as well as its extensive and ongoing record of violating its international nuclear obligations, there is no acute crisis because building a bomb would take time, would be observable, and could be stopped by force. Taken together, these assumptions and their moderating impact on Israeli and American policy form a new Iran concept reminiscent of its 1973 namesake and of the systemic failures that preceded the October 7 massacre.

Meanwhile, most of the restrictions put in place by the 2015 nuclear deal will expire by the end of next year, rendering the question of Iran’s adherence moot. And the forces that could be taking action aren’t:

The European Union regularly issues boilerplate press releases asserting its members’ “grave concern.” American decisionmakers and spokespeople have created the unmistakable impression that their reservations about the use of force are stronger than their commitment to use force to prevent an Iranian atomic bomb. At the same time, the U.S. refuses to enforce its own sanctions comprehensively: Iranian oil exports (especially to China) and foreign-currency reserves have ballooned since January 2021, when the Biden administration took office.

Israel’s response has also been sluggish and ambiguous. Despite its oft-stated policy of never allowing a nuclear Iran, Israel’s words and deeds have sent mixed messages to allies and adversaries—perhaps inadvertently reinforcing the prevailing sense in Washington and elsewhere that Iran’s nuclear efforts do not present an exigent crisis.