Following the announcement that the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain were normalizing their relations with Israel—with tacit Saudi consent—the Palestinian Authority (PA) immediately reached out to Turkey and Qatar, which are aligned against these three Gulf states as well as Egypt. Mahmoud Abbas, the PA president, also has raised the possibility of reconciliation with its rival, Hamas, which is backed by Turkey and Qatar. Ghaith al-Omari explains:

From Ramallah’s perspective, these moves are not intended as a strategic shift. . . . Rather [they] serve two purposes. First, they are meant to signal the PA’s displeasure toward the Arab reaction to the normalization deals, evident in the PA’s threat to align with an alternative axis in an effort to pressure [Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE]. Second, they are a means of creating diplomatic and political motion, ultimately buying time until [the U.S. presidential elections in] November. . . .

In such fraught circumstances, [however]. continued overtures to Ankara and Doha may well prompt Arab leaders to downgrade further their own relations with the PA, leaving its president Mahmoud Abbas with no way back to the fold, and effectively forcing the PA closer to Turkey and Qatar. This situation could be further exacerbated if either Turkey or Qatar uses the Palestinian issue to stoke its rivalries with Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

Furthermore, such a shift could weaken the moderating influence of the PA’s traditional allies. Loss of Arab financial support would intensify the economic crisis in the West Bank and lead to more volatility. In addition, reintroducing Hamas to the PA not only will cause the PA’s international isolation, but also could terminate Palestinian-Israeli security cooperation—a key reason for the relative security stability in the West Bank—and raise concerns in Jordan. Israel has already warned the PA about the implications of bringing Hamas back to the West Bank.

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.