Over the weekend, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad fired more than 600 rockets into Israel, killing four and wounding more. Avi Issacharoff argues that this is a carefully planned attempt by Hamas to pressure Jerusalem into allowing further transfers of cash from Qatar:

Hamas continues to demonstrate that it maintains disciplined control over its arsenal, and has escalated the conflict with Israel in a measured and deliberate way. The terror group’s long-range rockets have not yet been deployed—a message to Israel that there is still room for talks, and that the current crisis can be ended quickly. The group’s chief demand for doing so: allowing donated cash to enter the Gaza Strip with the start of Ramadan, which [began yesterday evening]. . . .

Hamas is [also] working hard to demonstrate a high level of military discipline and a dramatic improvement in its ability to operate under fire. . . . The entire organization has gone underground—literally, into the endless tunnels that crisscross the Gaza Strip. Hamas has been preparing those tunnels for years in expectation of war, all the while showing it has the capacity to rain rockets continuously on Israel despite a massive air campaign against it. . . .

It is no longer possible to continue ignoring the woeful decision taken by the government over six months ago that created the current predicament: when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed to allow suitcases carrying $15 million in cash—destined for Hamas’s coffers—into Gaza each month.

It was that decision that created the current equation of cash for calm, and which is now exacting a high cost from Israel to ensure the cash continues to flow. As soon as the cash was delayed, the deterioration was only a matter of time. Hamas understands it can extort Israel and threaten it during this week of Memorial Day and Independence Day, and with next week’s Eurovision contest.

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.