Opponents of the application of Israeli law to parts of Judea and Samaria have argued that it might result in rioting, and perhaps revolt, in the areas governed by the Palestinian Authority (PA). Of course, similar predictions were made about America’s decision to relocate its embassy to Jerusalem, and were proved wrong. Hillel Frisch asks whether this time will be different:

As noted by the political philosopher Hannah Arendt, even professional revolutionaries who spend their days and nights trying to foment rebellions are almost always just as surprised as the targeted states when a rebellion actually breaks out. . . . Consider . . . the violent protests that followed the recent death of George Floyd and the severe beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles nearly 30 years ago. Other similar events occurred between those incidents that did not elicit such a response.

The Palestinian officials who are threatening mass violence . . . know [that] most of the “Days of Rage” they have called for yielded only minor demonstrations. . . . Of course, this does not mean a declaration of sovereignty will not elicit protests. The PA has Fatah professionals who are paid to foment strife, but they are not in a position to ensure numbers that would produce mass and continuous violence.

As for the Palestinian security forces trained by the U.S. since 2006, they are hardly likely to be deployed to commit violence against Israel. They are too important to the PA, which needs them to suppress Hamas—the terrorist group that evicted the PA from Gaza in 2007. . . . Most Palestinian security officers have been in the service for over ten years and are at least 30 years old. Many have families and all have been accumulating pensions. It is doubtful that they will be enthused about taking on the far-superior IDF.

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.