Killings have increased and rogue Palestinian groups have grown in number since Israel’s new right-wing government took power
(Bloomberg) — Sitting in a beautifully tailored suit in the heart of the West Bank city of Ramallah this week, Samir Hulileh, the chairman of the Palestine Stock Exchange, offered some sobering thoughts on how his countrymen should deal with Israel’s new right-wing government:
“The old system has failed. Let everybody resist in his own way till a new form has become clear. Negotiation is not the way. Not anymore. We don’t have a partner. Settlers — our enemy — are now in the government. Different times are coming.”
A veteran of numerous boards and councils, the 65-year-old is one of the most important Palestinian investors and businessmen. For decades he worked with his Israeli counterparts on matters of economic cooperation at the highest levels, seeking open borders for the movement of goods and labor as well as coordinating production and trade in infrastructure, industry, agriculture and tourism. Hulileh knows more than almost anyone about how the Palestinian economy is structured. There is, in other words, no more establishment figure.
So, his sense that negotiation is not possible with the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offers a chilling insight into the current bleak moment in this decades-old conflict. The first three months of 2023 have seen the bloodiest start to a year in two decades, with 90 Palestinians and 15 Israelis killed, and talk of more explosions to come.
As the Muslim holy month of Ramadan starts, with Passover and Easter around the corner, fears are running high of further clashes around Jerusalem. In addition, Palestinian schools and courts are closed due to strikes, adding to a sense of chaos.
Since taking office in December, the government’s radical ministers have dismissed any notion of a Palestinian state, meted out severe punishment to the families of Palestinians engaged in violence and cut back on tax payments to the Palestinian Authority. The Authority, sclerotic even before, has started to unravel as weapons have been smuggled in and rogue militias set up. What once would have been arrests by Israeli soldiers have turned into deadly gun battles.
Earlier this month, after several hundred Israeli settlers ran riot through the Palestinian village of Huwara, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a key Netanyahu partner who advocates Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank, said the village should be “wiped out.” He later disavowed the statement.
Smotrich inflamed anger again last weekend when he declared at a memorial service in Paris that “there’s no such thing as Palestinians because there’s no such thing as a Palestinian people.”
That remark prompted a Hamas official in Gaza, Sheikh Saleh al-Arouri, to call on “everyone who possesses weapons to defend our Palestinian people,” adding “there’s no good in a gun that does not defend our people and does not confront the aggressors.”
It’s not unusual for Hamas to talk in such terms – but now, they’re no longer the only one. Faith in the Palestinian leadership has bottomed out, with West Bankers feeling a mix of political exhaustion and despair.
In a poll conducted this month by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey, a majority of West Bankers said they favor the dissolution of the Palestinian Authority, the governing body run by President Mahmoud Abbas. It was the first such outcome in 13 years of asking the question,
“The people feel the Palestinian Authority is only serving the interests of Israel,” noted Khalil Shikaki, director of the center who conducted the poll. “It has lost all legitimacy. Abbas was elected for four years in 2005. He’s still there and has virtually no popular support.”
Amal Masri, whose company publishes a business magazine in Ramallah, says her children and those of her friends blame her generation for negotiating with Israel 30 years ago, given how little was achieved. “The new generation is saying, ‘You gave up 80% of our land and the Israelis are taking away the remaining 20%. Now we want the whole thing back.”
Shikaki, who’s been studying Palestinian public opinion for three decades, says he expects the future to be violent.
In recent months, new armed groups with names like Lion’s Den and Jenin Brigade have arisen in the northern West Bank. And while they’ve started out small and disorganized, he predicts that will change as several dozen members have quickly grown to several hundred. The Palestinian Authority claims that the groups are unaffiliated but funded heavily by Hamas.
Two-thirds of West Bank respondents now favor such groups, the March survey found. Fearful of a civil war, Shikaki says, the Palestinian security services has choosen not to confront them.
Tala Dwaikat, spokesmen for the Palestinian security services, rejected that characterization, blaming their proliferation on Israel.
“The Palestinian Authority has the ability to provide security to its citizens, but the ones who are obstructing security in West Bank villages and cities are the Israelis,” he said. “When a 20-year-old sees the killing and aggression conducted by the occupation, who can stop him? Before we go after the Lion’s Den, we should focus on who bears full responsibility.”
This volatile mix of factors – set against ongoing government talks about increasing settlement construction, and the US government’s recent decision to summon Israel’s ambassador to Washington after Netanyahu lifted a 2005 ban on visiting four small northern settlements – has led many to believe that violence will intensify.
“There is a huge number of young angry Palestinian men whose lives are worse than a decade ago,” said Miri Eisen, a retired Israeli intelligence officer. “Combine that with a rash of break-ins into army bases where M16s and other arms have been stolen. Now when our commandos go in, instead of arrests, it turns into a gunfight.”
Sam Bahour, a Palestinian businessman, said, “In Ramallah today, I can buy you a weapon more quickly than I can get you a plumber.”
The result has been rising Palestinian deaths, creating martyrs embraced on the street.
At the same time, few expect an organized uprising.
“There is no evidence that an explosion is coming soon,” Shikaki said. Unlike when Yasser Arafat launched the second intifada in 2000, officials and analysts on both sides say that Abbas has no desire to begin a full-out war. Moreover, Israel’s close monitoring of online speech and texts, combined with nightly commando-led raids on Palestinian towns, makes organizing a rebellion extremely challenging, both sides say.
A debate persists within the Israeli security establishment on how best to fight violence. Those who held sway in the previous government favored narrow, targeted punishments for perpetrators combined with broader economic measures to incentivize coexistence. But the new guard has followed in the footsteps of hardliners such as former national security adviser Uzi Dayan, who maintains that public humiliation – including home demolition – is the most effective tool.
For Hulileh, the stock exchange chairman, that approach leads only to despair.
“You keep thinking you’ve hit bottom,” he said. “But then you keep going down.”
Bahour, the Ramallah businessman, says that Palestinians are “deeper in a hole than we have ever been,” but takes some comfort in the internal reckoning happening within Israel.
“This could be a wakeup call for Israel to see that the occupation is a dead end,” he said. “Perhaps these protests will bring a different leadership. In a way, I’m jealous of those protests. We need to be able to change our leadership too.”
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