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The view from Ramallah / An Intifada in its infancy?
By Jesse Rosenfeld
Tags: Israel news, jewish world 

The stores were all shuttered, the streets virtually empty and every corner was guarded by police officers and soldiers deployed by the colonial force, eying small groups of Arab youth while scratching at their batons, machine guns ready.

A demonstration of schoolgirls surrounded by riot police decried the massacre and the closed tourist shops screamed loudly for resistance and non-cooperation.

The air in East Jerusalem on Sunday, December 28 brought to mind the scene of the general strike called by North African Front Libération National (FLN) in the the 1966 French film, The Battle of Algiers.
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However, instead of French police and soldiers, the light blue police uniforms had Stars of David emblazoned on their chests and the pale green uniforms were those of the Israeli army.

This was not the Algiers' suk, but Palestinian East Jerusalem - Israeli-occupied since 1967 - on the second of a 3-day general strike against Israel's offensive on Gaza.

"There is a new Intifada coming and it will start in the West Bank," my friend in the Old City of Jerusalem said, as we sat in his living room that afternoon, watching televised scenes of riots in front of Egypt's embassy in Beirut.

"What else are we supposed to do, this occupation only gets worse and we are being left with nothing," he said.

Unrest and anger have swept across the West Bank as the death toll rises by the hundreds. Palestinians I've spoken to in the Rafah refugee camp in southern Gaza describe blasting down the Egyptian border wall last Sunday to escape the bombings, only to find themselves fired upon by Egyptian forces while trying to cross.

A Palestinian source told me that last Monday emergency services began evacuating homes in the camp on account of the imminent threat of Israeli bombs, but said they had no where to go to escape the jets.

While the Palestinian Authority is busy trying to score divisive political points by condemning Hamas and cracking down on solidarity demonstrations in the West Bank, outrage and despair prevail among Palestinians.

Palestinian youth clashed with soldiers at checkpoints across the West Bank and mass demonstrations were held in PA-controlled Hebron, Bethlehem, Ramallah and Nablus, calling for unified resistance to Israeli violence. There were also sporadic riots in East Jerusalem.

Meanwhile, the PA has been doing everything in its power to stand in the way of Palestinian community action. But there is a general will to resist and there is popular sentiment among Palestinians that President Mahmoud Abbas is a collaborator with Israel who has achieved little for them.

On December 28, the PA security forces attacked Gaza solidarity demonstrations in Ramallah as soon as the Hamas flags appeared.

In Bethlehem, PA police tried to block a march from the Deheisha refugee camp to Israel's separation wall and to the Gilo checkpoint - meanwhile being hit by the barrage of stones the protesters had reserved for the Israeli soldiers.

In Hebron, PA forces shot a Palestinian protesting the Israeli assault.

A day and a half later, stores had reopened across West Bank cities and there was a sense of lull - but an uprising may still be in the works.

Just as Israel said last week that its air strikes on Gaza were just the beginning, the Palestinian 3-day general strike also seems to be just the beginning of a much bigger action.

Now that Israel has embarked on a full-scale ground invasion of Gaza, Palestinian youths clash daily at West Bank checkpoints, while PA forces struggle to contain mass demonstrations and prevent confrontation with the Israeli army.

The checkpoint riots have been some of the Palestinians' most forceful and unified in recent times. Palestinian citizens of Israel and East Jerusalemites alike are also hitting the streets, calling for a new Intifada - meaning shrugging-off, or uprising.

West Bank anger has only compounded since last Sunday, when the army killed Arafat Rateb Khawaje, 22, in the West Bank town of Ni'lin and Mohammad Hamid, 20, in Silwad.

The Monday morning funeral processions on December 29 in Ramallah, Silwad and Ni'lin were aburst with fresh feelings of fury.

In Silwad, over a thousand people marched while Palestinian resistance fighters wearing ski masks and carrying AK 47s looked down onto an Israeli guard tower.

In Ni'lin, the site of months-long protests against the expansion of the separation wall through the village's farm land, the checkpoint riots were determined and poured with outrage as the village buried its third local under the age of 23 since August.

Riots and demonstration have also spread across the Palestinian-Israeli towns and cities, from Umm al-Fahm and Sahknin to Haifa and Jaffa.

Now that Hamas rocket fire can reach as far as the desert city of Be'er Sheva, the armed resistance is sending Israelis the message that they will not be able to comfortably ignore the violence that Israel is inflicting on Gaza.

Likewise, the popular Palestinian demonstration and riots are a clear statement to Israel that Palestinians will no longer stand by while their brothers are murdered in Gaza and their oppression and segregation intensify - regardless of what the PA says.

As for the PA's efforts to co-opt or coerce West Bank Palestinians out of revolting?

Middle class residents of Ramallah may oblige, for fear of economic loss, but Israel's unwillingness to grant Palestinians an end to military rule and segregation in either a viable state of their own, or equal rights in a bi-national state, leaves Palestinians with no other choice but to rise up.

A colleague from Ni'lin summed up the possibility of an infant Intifada blooming against the will of the PA, saying: "You see that we have no problem confronting the fourth largest army in the world, you think we're really that concerned about the PA."

Jesse Rosenfeld is a Canadian freelance journalist based in Tel Aviv and Ramallah.
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