While the U.S. and its allies have crushed Islamic State in northeastern Syria, and Bashar al-Assad—with the help of Iran and Russia—has eliminated all but a few rebel redoubts, the country is hardly at peace. Eden Kaduri and Jony Essa assess the current situation, and where it leaves Israel:

After eleven years of civil war, Syria is divided, subject to the influence of foreign forces, and suffering from a severe economic and humanitarian crisis. This transitional period is an opportunity for Israel to influence the future shape and stability of its northern neighbor. To be sure, the Assad regime remains obligated to Iran and does not intend to break off relations with it, even in order to return to the Arab world and obtain essential economic aid. Moreover, Iran is expected to increase its influence in Syria as Russia’s involvement is cut back due to the war in Ukraine. However, Assad will try to limit the presence and military visibility of Iran in his country in order to avoid paying the price of Israeli attacks.

Israel must therefore continue working to block Iranian entrenchment in Syria and the military threat that it poses—and in order to provide Assad with grounds and leverage to remove Iran from Syrian territory. This means a continuation of the aerial attacks, while retaining the mechanism of coordination with Russia, and improving the efforts to achieve more meaningful and long-term influence. In this framework, Syria should be seen as a divided nation, and Israel should work on building special ties with potential local allies, in particular the Kurds in the northeast of the country and the Druze in the south.

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.