While the current state of the Palestinian economy is nowhere near as bad as one might think from reading the Western press, writes Hillel Frisch, it is beset by serious problems:

According to the standards of the World Bank, West Bankers are middle-class and Gaza residents lower-middle-class. [But] it is a matter of serious concern that neither in Gaza nor in the territory controlled by the Palestinian Authority is [there] a functioning domestic economy. By far the most important element propping up Palestinian economic welfare levels is financial aid [from] donors such as USAID, the EU, and church-related organizations, which underwrites roughly one-third of the [Palestinian] gross national product in the West Bank and considerably more in Gaza. . . .

[T]he substantial economic aid the PA receives from the EU, USAID, and individual EU member states enables it to reward incarcerated terrorists, terrorists released from prison, and the families of terrorists both living and dead with generous stipends and financial support. . . . Such support acts as an incentive to commit acts of terrorism and lowers deterrence against those who would commit such acts even without incentives.

Yet the problem is even broader. The most important group of actors on the Arab side—the PA, its militia Fatah, and Hamas—have perfected a deadly political economy rather than built a functioning one. It is the use of force, or the threat of the use of force, that assures the flow of aid from international actors, many of whom want to pacify the situation. The [donors] thus become accessories to a form of protection racket that demands, “Support me or I’ll attack Israel and its Jewish citizens.” The EU, anxious lest Israel retaliate and create a refugee problem whose imprint will be felt in Europe, plays the game and pays up.

Unfortunately, this state of affairs will only worsen if a Palestinian state comes into being. Why is this? Because manufacturers in the PA and Gaza are shut out from their most important markets: Jordan and Egypt.

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.