Over the past few days, Israel has seen an upsurge of violence: first isolated and unprovoked Arab attacks on ultra-Orthodox Jews, and worshippers returning from Ramadan services clashing with police in Jerusalem’s Old City. Then a Jewish extremist group marched through the city, waving banners reading “Death to Arabs,” and attacked an Arab home—after which Arabs began to riot. Not to be left out, Hamas and its affiliates have resumed the violent protests at the Gaza border fences, and fired dozens of rockets and mortars at villages in southern Israel. Khaled Abu Toameh explains what Palestinian leaders, focused on the upcoming elections for the Palestinian parliament, have to gain:

The Palestinian factions, . . . specifically Fatah and Hamas, seek to use the issue of Jerusalem as a distraction from the internal problems and challenges they are increasingly facing on the eve of the elections.

Israeli authorities . . . evidently underestimated the calls made by the factions and their leaders over the past few weeks to turn Jerusalem into a battlefield for “constant clashes” with the Israeli security forces and “settlers.” . . . The demonstration organized this past Thursday by far-right Jewish activists outside the Old City was used by the leaders of Fatah, [which governs the West Bank], as an excuse to escalate the violence. It was portrayed by the Fatah leadership as part of an attempt to “storm” al-Aqsa Mosque and the homes of eastern-Jerusalem residents.

The issue of Jerusalem is of significant importance to the Palestinian Authority and Fatah leaders, particularly in light of accusations that they have done almost nothing to assist [its] Arab residents or “thwart Israeli conspiracies” against the city and al-Aqsa Mosque.

Hamas and the Gaza-based factions, meanwhile, are also trying to cash in on the Jerusalem riots ahead of the elections. The rockets fired into Israeli territory over the weekend were aimed to show the Palestinian public that these factions are also involved in the “battle” against Israel in Jerusalem. . . . Like Fatah, Hamas is also hoping to use the issue of Jerusalem as an excuse to divert attention away from its failed governance and policies.

Yesterday, Israel’s Channel 12 reported that Israeli representatives have been involved in secret talks, brokered by the United Arab Emirates, with their Syrian counterparts about the potential establishment of diplomatic relations between their countries. Even more surprisingly, on Wednesday an Israeli reporter spoke with a senior official from Syria’s information ministry, Ali al-Rifai. The prospect of a member of the Syrian government, or even a private citizen, giving an on-the-record interview to an Israeli journalist was simply unthinkable under the old regime. What’s more, his message was that Damascus seeks peace with other countries in the region, Israel included.

These developments alone should make Israelis sanguine about Donald Trump’s overtures to Syria’s new rulers. Yet the interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa’s jihadist resumé, his connections with Turkey and Qatar, and brutal attacks on minorities by forces aligned with, or part of, his regime remain reasons for skepticism. While recognizing these concerns, Noah Rothman nonetheless makes the case for optimism:

The old Syrian regime was an incubator and exporter of terrorism, as well as an Iranian vassal state. The Assad regime trained, funded, and introduced terrorists into Iraq intent on killing American soldiers. It hosted Iranian terrorist proxies as well as the Russian military and its mercenary cutouts. It was contemptuous of U.S.-backed proscriptions on the use of chemical weapons on the battlefield, necessitating American military intervention—an unavoidable outcome, clearly, given Barack Obama’s desperate efforts to avoid it. It incubated Islamic State as a counterweight against the Western-oriented rebel groups vying to tear that regime down, going so far as to purchase its own oil from the nascent Islamist group.

The Assad regime was an enemy of the United States. The Sharaa regime could yet be a friend to America. . . . Insofar as geopolitics is a zero-sum game, taking Syria off the board for Russia and Iran and adding it to the collection of Western assets would be a triumph. At the very least, it’s worth a shot. Trump deserves credit for taking it.