A month ago I wrote an article entitled ‘The Failed State of the Two-State Solution.’ In it, I wrote that “by the ballot or by the ballot Hamas will head any Palestinian state as they did when Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005.”
So what has happened in the short time since I released that article?
In Nablus, on August 27, an estimated 120,000 protesters demonstrated against the Palestinian Authority after an Arab was beaten to death by PA security men. Many called for an international investigation into the murder as the Palestinian Authority threatened to arrest some of the leaders of the protest march. The town of Nablus has been described as being in “total anarchy.”
Sporadic violence has broken out in recent days against the Palestinian Authority, often by individuals but also by tribal groups or clans at odds with the increasingly unpopular rule by perceived corrupt leaders.
Universities are the crucibles that produce the next generation of opinion and influence makers. What has flown below the radar of the international community is that, at Birzeit University, the student body overwhelmingly elected students affiliated to Hamas with the Islamic List taking a majority 26 seats against Fatah’s 19. For the uninitiated, Birzeit is not a campus in the Gaza Strip. Birzeit University is located ten kilometers north of Ramallah, an easy march to Palestinian Authority headquarters.
Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah, propped up by the international community and, by default, the Israeli government, has failed this community by his stubborn refusal to negotiate with Israel, a refusal based on his adamant rejection of living alongside a Jewish state.
He has clearly also failed his own people who elected him back in 2005 and have been barred from expressing their democratic voice ever since.
Surveys show a sharp fall in Palestinian Arabs supporting a two-state solution. There has been a radical fall in support for an Abbas-led Palestinian rulership and a rise in support for Hamas.
The persistent fever for violence against Israel was highlighted in a study made in March 2016 by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Study which found that the majority of Palestinian Arabs yearn for violence. 60% of West Bank Arabs and three quarters of Gaza Strip Arabs favor violence against Jews.
If truth be told, Arabs living under Palestinian control are angrier at their leaders than they are against Israel.