Palestinian youth have lost hope that their leaders can do anything for them

Protest comes in two forms, says Rita Abu Ghulmeh (21). There is the protest of hope, where it trembles with energy, and young people know that they can change the world. And you have the protest of despair. You go out into the street, scream your frustration and know: it serves no purpose.

Abu Ghulmeh’s protest belongs to the latter group. “I drag myself outside and then I go,” she says. She is there every time, with the ever-growing group of Palestinians who take to the streets in Ramallah, on the occupied West Bank. In recent days they have not only been demonstrating against Israel, which is currently attacking Gaza with air strikes. Slogans are also chanted against their own authority: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who resides in Ramallah. “The people want the fall of the president,” the demonstrators, many of them young, chant in the central Manara Square, until Abbas’ police disperse the demonstrators with tear gas.

Abu Ghulmeh has red locks in his hair, wears a nose and eyebrow piercing and torn jeans. She studies English at Bir Zeit University. Her fellow students, she says, are gloomy and depressed. “They feel abandoned by their own leaders. As a Palestinian you must always ask yourself: who is on my side? And when you know the answer to that, it gets lonely: no one is on my side at all. Israel occupies my land. The Palestinian leadership here bends to Israel, is old and corrupt.” The screams filling the streets of Ramallah are expressions of that despair, she says.

Abbas’s position is shaky

The longer the war between Israel and Gaza lasts, the more serious the consequences for the West Bank become. At least dozens of Palestinians have been killed here by attacks by the Israeli army and Jewish settlers.

The position of 87-year-old Mahmoud Abbas as president of the Palestinian Authority was already shaky, but is coming under further pressure due to the war. Demonstrations against Abbas have been organized in several cities – a rarity in the Palestinian Territories. Not that all those demonstrators are for Hamas, says Abu Ghulmeh. “But we have lost hope that our own leaders can do anything for us.”

On paper, Abbas is in charge in Ramallah. But anyone who tries to enter the city, just north of Jerusalem, immediately understands that this is a paper reality. All but one of the access roads have been closed by the Israeli army since the situation in Gaza escalated. The only road that is still open is guarded by Israeli soldiers. There is a long traffic jam to get out of the city, and the atmosphere is permanently nervous. One soldier sees something suspicious, crouchs down in the middle of the road and points his gun at a car. Immediately the atmosphere becomes grim and tense. Only after a few minutes does the soldier relax and traffic is allowed to move on again.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) was conceived in the early 1990s as the legitimate representative of the Palestinians, an artificial layer of government between the population and the rest of the world. Israel and Yasser Arafat’s PLO (the Palestine Liberation Organization) agreed after international mediation that Palestinian self-rule would be established in parts of the Palestinian territories that Israel has occupied since 1967. In return, the PLO recognizes the existence of the State of Israel. The Palestinian areas are divided into a patchwork: Area A, especially the urban areas such as Ramallah, would be fully governed by a Palestinian Authority. The other areas remained (sometimes partially) occupied.

Dreaming of peace in Gaza

Palestinians then dared to dream of their own state, their own president. The parents of Fathi al-Ghoul (34), director of an advertising agency in Ramallah, were such dreamers. He talks about it in a coffee shop in Ramallah, close to his office. “They returned from Syria, where they lived as refugees, and went to live in Gaza. My father became an important advisor to the Prime Minister. They were fantastic years in Gaza.”

But the dream faded when negotiations for a Palestinian state went nowhere, the number of Jewish settlements in Palestinian territory continued to grow, and the dominant party Fatah (the secular party of Arafat and Abbas) faced competition from the fundamentalist Islamic Hamas. The last party seized power in Gaza in 2007, after which the family had to flee to Ramallah. The future Palestine broke in two.

Al-Ghoul’s grandfather stayed behind in Gaza. He is now 95. Al-Ghoul shows a video of his grandfather, an old but combative man with a keffiyeh. “He should flee now, to the south, but he has nowhere to go. He stays home. I have lost 21 family members, distant and close. In the beginning I called or texted family in Gaza, but I no longer know what words to use to comfort them.” Al-Ghoul has made one rule with itself. If more than three messages appear in quick succession in the family app group, he will only read them when he is home. Usually that means bad news from Gaza.

Al-Ghoul understands that Palestinians in Ramallah are angry and frustrated, including with the Palestinian Authority. But he is loyal to Abbas. “Abu Mazen (as Palestinians call him) believes in diplomacy and the peaceful resolution of the conflict. He is in consultation with the international community and stands up for Gaza. We mustn’t let ourselves be separated now. Abbas will get results, just wait.”

Fatah controls the West Bank

Although the Palestinian Authority was once designed as a temporary solution, the situation in the West Bank has been frozen for years. Abbas has his own ministries and civil servants, and his lightly armed police and security forces (they cannot be called an army) are often seen on the streets these days. The last fair elections were held in 2006. They were won by Hamas. Since the break with Gaza, opposition is not allowed in the West Bank. One party is dominant: Fatah, with yellow flags everywhere. Ramallah has since become a relatively prosperous city, with gleaming department stores and hip cafes, thanks to money from the international community and countless NGOs.

Just as Fathi al-Ghoul’s view of the PA is colored by his father, so is that of student Rita Abu Ghulmeh. Her father, Ahed, is in the maximum security Ofer prison in Israel, about ten kilometers away as the crow flies. Ahed Abu Ghulmeh was closely involved in the assassination of Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Ze’evi in ​​October 2001. He was arrested and extradited to Israel by PA forces.

Rita’s mother was pregnant with her when it happened. “I only hugged my father once, that was when I was five years old. I speak to him once a month, with a glass between us. Regardless of what my father did, I cannot hold him because of the PA’s collaboration with Israel.”

Mahmoud Abbas is dancing on an increasingly thinner tightrope, says Palestinian political analyst Jehad Harb gloomily. “Israel is weakening Abbas’ position by continuously invading and building new settlements. That makes Hamas more popular among Palestinians, because at least they are resisting. Many Hamas fighters have a past with Fatah.”

Moreover, he says, Palestinians have learned that change only happens when Israel feels forced. “The withdrawal from Gaza (in 2005) and Lebanon (in 2000) were forced, not a voluntary choice. That is the bitter thing about the whole situation: the reason that there is attention for Palestine, that we are now also talking about it, is because of the violence of Hamas.”

Abbas remains the interlocutor for the West and Israel, and tries to maintain his own authority by declaring solidarity with Gaza. But he gets little done internationally, and for a large part of his population the support for Gaza is not loud enough, too cautious. However, Abbas did say strongly at a summit in Cairo this weekend about Israel’s call for the people of Gaza to leave the north of the densely populated area: “We are not leaving, we are staying on our land.”

The Israeli army is about to start a ground war in Gaza. One scenario could be that Hamas is deposed and another Palestinian government would have to fill the vacuum. Former Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid, now opposition leader, told the international press that he would prefer to see the PA take over that role and restore the situation before 2007. The consequences for the shaky Palestinian Authority would be disastrous, says Jehad Harb. “Imagine them being driven to Gaza City on the roof of an Israeli tank.” He shakes his head. “It would take away the last vestige of credibility of Abbas and his Fatah. It can’t be, it can’t be.”

© NRC MEDIA