No. of Recommendations: 2
This matches pretty close my thinking on W Bank Palestinians vs Gaza. I talked with some Pal pet shop owners in SoCal, they thought they paid a heavy price and got nowhere.
SNIP Conclusion
The best explanation for the relative passivity of most West Bank Palestinians is the same one offered early in the war—namely, the traumatic memory of the second intifada, when they paid a huge price but failed to secure significant political achievements after four years of violence. In this respect, Israel’s recent conduct in the West Bank echoes the difficult period two decades ago when it responded to mass violence with large-scale arrests, resulting in heavy Palestinian casualties.
One could also argue that the modern influences of the past twenty years—consumer culture, social media, single-family housing, mass use of technology—have led many West Bankers to focus more on personal advancement than the collective ideologies and commitments that fuel mass uprisings. For those who lived through the second intifada, such influences could make them even more likely to prefer a distasteful status quo over their past experience of wider war, chaos, and siege.
Of course, even if this preference is prevalent in the West Bank, it is hardly set in stone, nor does it necessarily apply to younger Palestinians, who are even more prone to identifying with Hamas and other violent groups. Their aversion to the Palestinian Authority is growing, with numerous polls and analyses indicating that many locals view institutions like the PA as an unnecessary evil and an impediment to advancing the Palestinian national movement and achieving freedom from occupation.
Despite legitimate criticism of the PA’s rhetoric and conduct, however, Israelis have a crucial interest in preventing its collapse, in part so that it can continue to serve as a check on terrorists and a barrier against Hamas’s rise in the West Bank. In this sense, those who argue that there is little difference between the PA and Hamas will only ease the latter’s path to taking control of the Palestinian national movement.
Neomi Neumann is a visiting fellow at The Washington Institute and former head of the research unit at the Israel Security Agency SNIP
https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysi... 