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West Bank Palestinians Failed to Rise Up in Support for Gaza
(Guardian-UK) Ewen MacAskill - I returned to the West Bank in November for the first time in 20 years, where I had visited regularly as a correspondent for the Guardian during the second intifada. I had been invited to attend a conference at Birzeit University, on the outskirts of Ramallah, organized by Progressive International. I witnessed how dispirited Palestinians have become. I was curious as to why there had been no Palestinian uprising in the West Bank comparable to the second intifada, in support of their compatriots in Gaza. Curious, too, about how much support there was for Hamas in the West Bank, and whether anyone believed that an independent Palestinian state was something we might see in the next few decades. Ramallah, the political center of the West Bank, looked cleaner and more prosperous than the last time I was there. Young, fashion-conscious Palestinians sat chatting in cafes and bars; according to some of the older generation, they are generally less concerned about politics. While Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat backed the second intifada, his successor, Mahmoud Abbas, resisted pressure over the past two years to launch a new uprising in the West Bank. Abbas's decision is unpopular among Palestinians, but his decision was supported by Maher Canawati, the mayor of Bethlehem, who said: "People in the West Bank understood that this was not the time to do what they did in the first and second intifada. We do not want to give them an excuse to attack us....If we decided to go with an uprising, it would give them the green light to retaliate as they did in Gaza." The Palestinian Authority, nominally responsible for administration of the West Bank and run by Fatah, is synonymous with corruption, embezzlement, dodgy contracts and nepotism. Palestinians I spoke to were incensed by the way jobs were so often awarded not on merit but on family links, contacts, or political affiliation. Regarding the 7 October massacre, in which more than 1,200 Israelis and foreigners were killed and about 250 taken hostage, Palestinians viewed Hamas as part of the resistance and few that I met were prepared to criticize the attack.