Since the brief war in May—known in Israel as Operation Guardian of the Walls—Hamas has more or less refrained from launching missiles from Gaza, while Jerusalem has eased some of the economic pressure on the territory. Egypt meanwhile has been trying to mediate an arrangement whereby Hamas will release the bodies of two fallen Israeli soldiers, along with the Israeli citizens it is holding hostage. But Hamas has used the six months of quiet to build up its arsenal and to expand its reach, as Kobi Michael explains:

The Hamas leadership in Gaza, which until Guardian of the Walls was focused on Gazan affairs and did not show much interest in the West Bank, . . . adopted a “dual resistance strategy,” which in essence is an effort to maintain security calm in the Gaza Strip alongside a developing and intensive effort to consolidate an infrastructure in the West Bank for terror operations against Israel. . . . [I]n addition to these efforts, the organization—with Iranian help and guidance, and in coordination with Hizballah—is also working to develop its military infrastructure in southern Lebanon. Moreover, it is working to foment unrest in eastern Jerusalem and deepen channels of communication with Israel’s Arab citizens.

Hamas’s strategic positioning after the round of fighting in May is better than before. Israel has eased the security closure of the Gaza Strip more than since Hamas took control of Gaza.

Now is the time for Israel to reassess its moves with respect to the organization. It should neutralize the dual resistance strategy and make it clear that it sees Hamas as a single entity, and therefore any terror activity in the West Bank or southern Lebanon will be treated in the same way as terror activity in the Gaza Strip, with some of the responsibility assigned to the Hamas leadership in Gaza, which is no longer trying to hide its involvement in other theaters.

Israel must take the initiative, at a time it deems more strategically convenient rather than at a time imposed by Hamas, and inflict ongoing critical damage to the organization’s military infrastructure in all its theaters—even at the cost of harming the chances of reaching an arrangement.

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.