Israeli and the Palestinian present: A temporary arrangement in the West Bank for ethnonational ongoing conflict

Abstract

This study argues that a political reality of a temporary arrangement has been solidified in Judea and Samaria since 2005, right after Abu Mazen was elected to be the President. It based on integrative approach suggests here for the first time and falls between the political peace process and the armed struggle approaches as a possible solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This is a result of social-political change within the Palestinian society: the Palestinian Authority has been concerned about maintaining its civil achievements since 2007, based on Fayyad’s program of building Palestinian statehood from the “bottom up.”Israel has used to deepen its security and settlement hold on the ground.This situation guarantees continuation of Israeli political and security dominance in this region; one de facto political entity is being settled between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, where two distinctly different communities are living side by side.

Keywords:

• West Bank
• Palestinian Authority
• Israel
• temporary arrangement

1. An introduction

The year 2017 was quite disappointing for Mahmoud Abbas (hereinafter Abu Mazen), the Palestinian president. A short time after Donald Trump inaugurated as President Abu Mazen visited Germany. “I came to Germany to promote the peace process. We, the Palestinians, demand only 22 percent of historic Palestine. Israel must accept that and stop expanding its settlements in the West Bank,” declared Abu Mazen during his last visit to Berlin in March 2017. His words reflected the traditional position he had held since he was elected to his post as the Palestinian president. During the second half of 2017, Abu Mazen was disillusioned over the United States policy regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. His public statements in Berlin showed great frustration at the continued diplomatic/political deadlock, which continued more than a decade (former U.S Secretary of State, John Kerry’s initiative in 2014 to renew dialogue between the two parties failed). From a perceptual perspective, Abu Mazen supports the solution of the Palestinian problem through political negotiations. This arrangement approach based on the belief that only dialogue (direct or through intermediaries) will end the conflict (see literature review below).

Abu Mazen is not the only regional leader who believes in the arrangement approach. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has also supported the same approach since his speech at Bar-Ilan University back in 2009. Netanyahu said: “in my vision of peace, two free peoples live side by side in a neighborly way and with mutual respect. Everyone has his flag, his anthem and his government. And no one threatens the security and survival of his neighbor.” Since this speech, Netanyahu did not presented a different political alternative, and when right wing elements in Israel asked him to renounce his position, he did not do it.¹ Various Arab leaders, including those of Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia (which had already proposed a peace initiative of its own in 2002) support the prime minister’s idea, even if there have been no significant negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians since 2009.

At the other pole, the leading approach is the resistance approach. Its adherents, such as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (hereinafter PIJ), have no room for political negotiations with Israel, and all of Palestine must be liberated only through violent conflict, including the use of weapons. Despite the fact that Hamas held indirect negotiations with Israel in the past (releasing prisoners and cease-fires in the Gaza Strip), it did not change in any way from its rigid ideological doctrine.² In fact, in the last decade there have been no changes and Hamas’ political announcement that it is willing to accept a state within the June 1967 borders does not change the movement’s basic positions. In that statement, the movement made it clear that it would not give up any part of Palestine.³

The main argument of this article is that between these two poles, an intermediate approach has developed in Judea and Samaria in the last decade. Its characteristics are temporary arrangements under Israeli control. This regulation would not be limited to timetables and is the result of the principle of ”stability of instability.” This temporary arrangement became possible because of mutual interests of Israel and the Palestinian Authority. As Tjosvold’s study argues, ”conflict has been defined as opposing interests involving scarce resources.⁴ However, this definition, as he continues, denies the reality that people with cooperative and overlapping goals can be in conflict. I use here Tjosvold’s argument in the opposite direction: people in conflict can be cooperative when their interests are overlapping. I argue that the mutual goal of Israel and the Palestinian Authority is to avoid escalation, meaning to maintain silence on the ground. This silence serves mutual interests. This de facto temporary arrangement, which proposed here for the first time, based on four basic assumptions:

1. The Palestinian leadership views the current situation as the lesser of two evils.

2. In the past decade, the Palestinian public in Judea and Samaria has focused on preserving (and improving) the fabric of life and is unwilling to endanger itself in the absence of a chance to realize national aspirations and without a proper political alternative.

3. From time to time, the security situation has escalated, because of spot developments such as individual terrorism, tension on the Temple Mount, prisoner strikes, the deaths of Palestinians by Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) fire, price tag attacks, or unusual Israeli security activity.

4. Israel’s freedom of security activity, including the prevention of the formation of “A” areas, which are under the full control of the Palestinians, prevents the establishment of terror elements in the arena.

This Palestinian policy of concentrating in security cooperation and at the same time enabling to put infrastructure to a future Palestinian state does not contradict the Palestinian line of challenging Israel in several routes: constant media and political incitement; inculcation of schoolchildren with anti-Israel/anti-Semitic hatred; salary payment to terrorists’ families; initiating international boycotts and de-legitimization campaigns. Despite this and although Abu Mazen had threatened to cease security cooperation. It never stops completely, and it remains an integral part of the PA’s policy, which also maintains Israeli interests. There fore it is a win-win situation as will be analyzed below.

1.1. Literature review: The arrangement approach and the resistance approach

For a start, it is important to make clear the literature review stressed the Israeli studies for managing or resolving the conflict. The reason for that is simple: Israel is the dominant power (politically and military) in the West Bank and despite international attempts to mediate between Israelis and Palestinians (1993, 2000, 2007, and 2014), the outcome was (and still) Israeli dominance, which lead to temporary arrangement, as I

References to the arrangement approach are not the exclusive domain of decision-making leaders. For years, this approach − under different names − has been the subject of research writing. The review below is far from complete and represents only Israeli writers, but its importance is that it presents the central ideas underlying the approach: security or peace; separation or integration; building mutual trust between the parties; a complete solution from the beginning of a process in stages; and leaders’ willingness to take risks.

After the June war of 1967, Joseph Nevo asked whether it was right for Israel to have a political solution with its Arab neighbors, emphasizing that Israel at that time was ready to negotiate. His conclusion was that there was a chance for peace between the states, but not between the people. When asked about the Palestinian issue, he estimated that there were only two alternatives: two states − Israeli and Palestinian − in the Land of Israel or a bi-national state in all of Israel.⁵ His analysis of the Palestinian side led to the conclusion that Israel would prefer maintaining security arrangements that it would be responsible for, to reaching a peace agreement with the Palestinians. Supporters of the settlement approach, which tried in the 21st century to lead to a negotiated solution to the conflict, also insisted on the need to include security arrangements in Judea and Samaria in order to ensure the security of the state and its residents from threats in this arena. This position preserves the relevance of Nevo’s approach, which he adopted about five decades ago.

In attempts to assess the merits of this approach, a series of researchers in the early 1980s examined whether there were changes on the Arab side. One of their main arguments at the time was that the harsh Arab position that sided with the 3 “no’s” as they were formulated at the Khartoum conference back in 1967 (no to negotiations with Israel, no to recognition of it, and no peace) was no longer absolute. Thus, a mood developed that did not rule out dialogue with Israel and even reaching peace, provided that a solution to the Palestinian problem was found. In an attempt to draw up various solutions, the various researchers (Shmuel Katz, Arieh Shalev, Mark Heller, Meir Amit, Mati Steinberg and others) proposed eight alternatives. The two extremes were holding that all of Palestine belongs to the Palestinians and seeing the territory of the entire Land of Israel as belonging to the Jews. In the middle, six other solutions were discussed including autonomy for the Palestinians and the transfer of territory to Jordan or a Palestinian state west of the Jordan River.⁶ In any case, none of these solutions matured into a settlement solution, at least not until September 1993.

The outbreak of the Intifada in Judea, Samaria, and the Gaza Strip in December 1987 and the subsequent political initiative in late 1988 were among the factors that led to the publication of a research paper by the Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University in 1989. At the beginning of the essay, the authors presented six possible solutions to the Palestinian question within the framework of an arrangement: Autonomy, annexation, a Palestinian state, withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, a Jordanian-Palestinian federation, or the preservation of the status quo. Their conclusion was that each of the six solutions is impossible and was not correct for Israel.⁷

The Madrid Conference (October 1991) was the prelude to preliminary talks between Israel and the Palestinians that matured into the Oslo Accords in September 1993. It was the first attempt by both sides to resolve the conflict in a negotiated manner following Madrid Conference (October 1991). Ron Pundak, who was involved in the talks prior to Oslo Accord, tried to analyze the failure of the parties to resolve the conflict in the settlement, and provided three possible answers: One is that “there is no peace between Israel and the Palestinians. The second believes that there is a chance, but the historic moment has not yet come when the two sides will realize that peace is the only option and that its realization entails painful concessions. The third answer is that there is a chance, and there is also historical maturity, but the problem lies in faulty reading by each side of the other’s real interests and mismanagement of the process.”⁸ He also openly criticized the weakness of the leaders on both sides preventing them from adopting the arrangement approach in full, and attributed it to their personal characteristics.

Dan Schueftan and Elie Podeh, tried, each in his own way, to examine the settlement approach from a historical perspective after the signing of the Oslo Accords. Schueftan went as far back as the Mandate period (mainly from the period of the events of 1936–1939) and concluded that there was no way of settling the Palestinian problem by integrating the two communities. He relied, among other things, on the conclusions of the Peel Commission of 1937.⁹ In reference to the Oslo Accords, he stated that the then Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, pursued the idea of a political arrangement with an approach that required separation between the two populations (Israelis and Palestinians), but Schueftan claimed that in fact Rabin’s policy had created an integration between the parties. One of the expressions of this integration was the economic agreement signed in Paris in 1994. The main bases for the agreement were Israel’s commitment to finance the Palestinian Authority in the field of agricultural exports, as well as the Israeli obligation to collect import taxes and VAT.¹⁰

Podeh examines the settlement approach in a book, which seeks to clarify whether both sides missed opportunities to achieve peace. In the Palestinian context, Podeh analyzes the Oslo Accords (1993) and for the Camp David II Conference in July 2000. His conclusion is that the Oslo process was a historic opportunity to reach an agreement between Israel and the PLO, and this was a successful process because both sides signed an agreement, even if it was an interim agreement. He believes that the final status agreement has not been achieved because leaders on both sides have been inhibited by a lack of full trust in the other side, despite his claim that the conditions for an arrangement between the parties have been fulfilled.¹¹ He also concludes that the opportunity for peace in a negotiated manner was missed because the Palestinians were not prepared to accept the parameters of the President Clinton Rule, also giving up the right of return.¹²

Finally, Uzi Arad called for the process of arrangements and emphasized the inconsistency between adopting the stages approach, as was the Oslo process, and the final settlement approach, as tried at the 2007 Annapolis conference.¹³ Other researchers pointed to a series of psychological barriers that prevented Israeli-Palestinian dialogue until the early 1990s. Moreover, at the intersections where negotiations were held between the sides, elements of: (1) mutual mistrust; (2) immaturity; (3) and differences of views between the parties, as well as the absence of substantive parts of the signed agreements were represented by Oslo I and Oslo II.¹⁴

Israel and the Palestinians had three rounds of talks since the Oslo Accord signed in 1993. Following the Camp David 2 summit (2000) and the Annapolis conference (2007), former Secretary of State, John Kerry, tried in 2013–2014 to revive dialogue between the parties, but failed to do so. According to Dekel and Petrack, all of these attempts failed due to unbridgeable gaps between the sides on the core issues of the final status agreement, and because of asymmetry in the negotiating goals. Attempts to circumvent the problem by using different approaches to advancing the negotiations have also failed. These failures led to violent outbursts, to a deep political deadlock, and to the erosion of the parties’ hopes for an agreement.¹⁵

Despite these failures, many in Israel and in the international system still support the arrangement approach (signing on peace accord) for ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and reach for a solution of two states for two peoples. As for the Palestinian arena, Abu Mazen stated, repeatedly, that he opposed terror and preferred to build the Palestinian state and society under the name The Great Jihad.¹⁶ At the same time, he was interested in reaching a peace agreement with Israel through dialogue between the sides. Abu Mazen’s principled position was (and still is) that living under foreign rule is not a reason to neglect necessary reforms within Palestinian society that are intended to ensure the rule of law, political stability, and the provision of public services of the highest possible quality to the population.

On the other side of the spectrum is the active resistance approach spearheaded by Hamas and PIJ. The Hamas charter, which lays down the movement’s platform, leaves little room for interpretation regarding the need to liberate Palestine from the rule of the Jews by using violence against them. Recent publications on Hamas’ willingness to soften the wording of the treaty and agree to a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders have not included any willingness of Hamas to recognize Israel, to lay down weapons in order to realize the goal, or to give up parts of Palestine.¹⁷

Over the years, there have been various publications about Hamas’ willingness to discuss the issue of recognition of Israel, and in practice, there have been indirect contacts between the movement and Israel (especially on the issue of releasing prisoners and abductees.) Moreover, the movement has not been willing to recognize Israel’s right to exist. Armed resistance has remained the main course of action, as proved by three rounds of fighting in the Gaza Strip in 2008, 2012 and 2014.¹⁸ Khaled Masha’al, the head of the political bureau of Hamas until 2017, made it clear that it is important to put pressure on Israel through armed and popular struggle. Asked about recognition of Israel’s right to existence, he replied that this matter will be discussed within Hamas after the establishment of an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. In one of his speeches to the people at a rally in Gaza in 2010, Masha’al declared that “Palestine from the sea to the river is the land of the Palestinians and the resistance is their legitimate right, which Hamas will not give up even if all the goals are achieved, including the release of the land.”¹⁹

The statement made by Musa Abu Marzuk in December 2014, according to which Hamas, the Islamic Jihad, and the majority of the Palestinian people opposed a state within the 1967 borders and recognition of Israel, was a step forward for the resistance camp. Hamas sees itself as a national-religious alternative to the Fatah-led secularist movement. Abu Marzuk also criticized Abu Mazen, who, unlike his predecessor, Yasser Arafat, is not a religious person and furthermore is not perceived as the father of the Palestinian revolution.²⁰ Masha’al followed his deputy, stating that Hamas served the entire Palestinian people and was ready to conduct a survey to examine who supports the population in the territories.²¹

Over the past few years, the resistance approach has gained many supporters among Palestinians, mainly because of its achievements, albeit tactical, against Israel. On the political level, it has led to an increase in support for Hamas and a decline in the number of supporters of Fatah and the Palestinian Authority, which required Abu Mazen to make adjustments in his policy.²² Public opinion polls conducted every quarter by Khalil Shikaki’s research institute (a representative sample of 1270 respondents) indicate support rates of more than a third of the Palestinian public in Judea and Samaria for an armed struggle against Israel. In times of security deterioration, support figures climb to about half of the respondents.²³ The resistance approach in Judea and Samaria has been characterized in recent years mainly by two patterns: first, the terrorism of individuals who carry out terrorist attacks, and the other, isolated attempts by global jihad elements to establish terrorist cells.

Various scholars reviewed the resistance approach led by the PLO until the end of the 1980s, followed by Hamas. The common denominator of all publications is the analysis of the Hamas charter. This charter requires every believer to carry out jihad for Palestine, and contains the ideology of the movement, as well as the various methods the movement uses to realize its goals; and these analyses present Hamas as a social movement that aims to establish a Palestinian society based on Islamic law (Sharia’a).²⁴

Exceptions are two studies by Eldar and Mishal. The first claims that Hamas was ready for a strategic dialogue within a long-term framework of peaceful coexistence for 25 years, claiming that Khakled Masha’al, then head of the movement’s political bureau supported this proposal and deliver it to Israel. The Israeli response was a military attack in the Gaza Strip.²⁵ Mishal believes that Hamas, despite being a movement with an uncompromising ideology, has adopted the network model and is, in fact, maintaining contacts, including dialogue, with any party that can achieve its goals, including Israel or the Palestinian Authority.²⁶

1.2. The interim approach: temporarily regulated by Israeli dominance

This study suggests an interim approach, which is a product of the current situation in the West Bank. It based on the integrative approach that sees negotiation as frame for win-win situation, integrative actors look to expand the profits, so that there is more to share between parties as a result of negotiation. This approach has objective criteria such as mutual gain, cooperation and exchanging information, mutual identification of problems and solutions and decision making.²⁷ My hypothesis, based on this approach as follows:

1. Palestinian Authority, under Mahmoud Abbas’ leadership has focused on civil affairs, mainly building state institutions since 2005.

2. Israel has used to deepen its security and settlement hold on the ground.

3. The new reality reduces the likelihood of reaching a settlement based on population separation due to their growing dependence

2. The analysis

The first component that led to this reality was the implementation of the Salam Fayyad’s plan, which aimed to create a governmental institutional infrastructure for the future Palestinian state. This was reinforced after Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip in June 2007. From then on, Abu Mazen and his people worked to formulate a plan to establish the state from the bottom, the aim of which was to carry out structural reforms in the Palestinian establishment and to instill in it values of transparency, accountability, and public accountability. Previous studies argued that the plan did not pave the way for the end of the Israeli presence in Judea and Samaria that it focused on civilian components and gave up on national ones.²⁸

In the introduction to the program itself, Fayyad explained that the goal was to implement positive steps, both nationally and internationally, in order to end the occupation and achieve a solution to the conflict.²⁹ The plan was in full conformity with the arrangement approach. It assumed that the solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was the root of the conflict in the entire region. Therefore, if the fundamental problem were resolved, it would be possible to advance, by arrangement, a broader regional solution. My claim is that the implementation of the plan did not solve the problem, but created a stable institutional infrastructure on the ground, providing the Palestinian population in Judea and Samaria with regular civilian services, while improving their quality of life.

The plan’s success stemmed from the desire to break a tradition of government based on corruption and personal ties and to establish transparency. This was reflected in the first years of implementation of the plan by encouraging investments by the private sector and improving the public systems, including: reforms in the construction of the annual budget, while monitoring the execution of the budgeted items; supervision of the banking system; tenders for the development of projects for the general public under the supervision of the Palestinian Ministry of Economy; the payment of salaries on a regular basis, to the extent possible given dependence on donor assistance and the transfer of funds from Israel to the public sector; and the introduction of computer systems that enabled real-time control of the functioning of the various PA ministries. All of this paralleled the construction of an organized reporting system for the international bodies that financed the various projects.³⁰

Fayyad made sure to promote foreign investment in community projects. In the first year of the implementation of the plan, he reported publicly on the execution of 1,100 projects throughout Judea and Samaria, about 300 of which were already completed by December 2008.³¹ These included the construction of roads, the establishment of infrastructure for the transfer of water from one area to the region, the construction of classrooms, the development of public gardens, street lighting, the establishment of a museum to commemorate Arafat, the establishment of medical centers, and the upgrading of postal services.³² Of particular importance were projects that were located in the area between Israeli communities, as was the case, for example, at a garbage collection center in East Bethlehem.³³

In addition, there has been a significant improvement in the functioning of the Palestinian security establishment, as indicated by international organizations that have provided regular assistance to Palestinian security apparatuses. Keith Dayton, who was the US security coordinator, pointed to a growing sense of security among civilians and effective functioning of the security forces against terrorism and the criminal infrastructure, including reducing the amounts of prostitution and drugs, increasing community policing, and curbing the phenomenon of armed men in refugee camps. “Crime rates are on the decline, stores are open even in the evening after sunset, and Palestinian girls, dressed in jeans, can visit their friends without fear of being attacked. All of these are positive signs, indicating that life in Judea and Samaria is returning to normal, and the Palestinians themselves are beginning to believe that these are indeed the face of reality.”³⁴

Over the years, Abu Mazen and Fayyad have been careful to create a link between the implementation of the plan and the arrangement approach. Abu Mazen’s public statements included constant references to the political process, and Fayyad publicly opposed the armed resistance. ”We want an independent state with Jerusalem as its capital, and resistance is not the way because it is perceived as terrorism. The choice of a non-violent policy yields important profits, and we want to ensure that the institutions of the Palestinian state are ready.”³⁵ In another statement, he specified that there had been a change in the thinking of the Palestinian public regarding violence, and that freedom cannot be realized violently.

Fayyad’s plan also directed the Palestinian Authority to work in the field of real estate. In Ramallah, a stock exchange was opened, the hospital was expanded, and new departments were created which enabled richer and richer health resources for the population. A new cultural hall was opened, and new hotels were built one by one. The Tel-Alkamer city project, which included a trade zone, was also dedicated to Jericho; it was designed to build a “bottom up” infrastructure for the country, and the results of the activity were also evident in the growing appreciation by the international community of the performance of Salam Fayyad as a prime minister backing Abbas.

The realization of the various projects was in fact intended to constitute a government start-up in Palestinian terms, which would enjoy unlimited marketing opportunities in the diplomatic, economic, international, and media spheres. Fayyad frequently visited the field and often spoke of the need to build Palestine. He also devoted a weekly radio broadcast to the program and its various projects, and gave the public a status quo on the various stages of progress of the projects on the ground. Marwan Barghouti, a senior Fatah official in Judea and Samaria, praised Fayyad’s plan and saw it as a central element of the steps necessary to establish an independent state.³⁶ Jihad Jia’ara, a senior military activist of Fatah, from Al-’Aida refugee camp near Bet Lehem, stated, as the spokesman for the military wing, that he and his colleagues had full confidence in Fayyad, who was working to build the Palestinian state.³⁷

Academics, students, professionals, and others also expressed satisfaction with the Palestinian Authority’s great progress in public institutions, environmental development, and economic stability. At the inauguration ceremony for an initiative in the village of Qibiya (Ramallah), the representative of the local council expressed appreciation for the plan and the government’s performance headed by Fayyad.³⁸ In mid-2010, Palestinians noted that “the city of Ramallah is full of life, radiating economic prosperity and the feeling that law and order are in place; many clothing and footwear stores, restaurants, coffee shops, fruit and vegetable stalls testify to lively economic activity. The large number of vehicles with Israeli license plates [mostly for residents of East Jerusalem or residents of Ramallah with a blue identity card] adds to the general sense of security.”³⁹ Fayyad began the infrastructure work for the construction of Rawabi, the new city in Judea and Samaria.⁴⁰

Fayyad’s withdrawal from the public-political arena in 2013, after a six-year term as prime minister, did not cancel his plan. Fayyad’s name was absent from the official publications, but the various projects continued on the ground. His replacement, Rami Hamdallah, adopted the main points of the plan, based on the understanding that it was intended to improve the functioning of the PA institutions vis-a-vis the citizens, and also eroded Fayyad’s patterns of action. Hamdallah frequently visits the area and introduced completed plans, simultaneously meeting with representatives of the donor countries to promote various projects.⁴¹ At a cabinet meeting in January 2014, he presented the challenges of promoting the economy, promoting a private sector, and developing infrastructure in the spirit of the existing plan.⁴² A year later, in another interview, he stressed that law and order must be upheld in accordance with goals of the program aimed at strengthening the residents’ personal security.⁴³

The official opposition of the PA, led by Hamas, could not prevent the implementation of the national program for several reasons: First, Israeli and Palestinian (and sometimes joint Israeli and Palestinian) foiling tactics did not allow the movement to establish military and civilian infrastructure that would destabilize the government. Secondly, Hamas as a religious-social movement was inherently opposed to taking a stand against a plan that promoted national goals in the form of a state and sovereignty. Finally, taking a stand against the Fayyad plan would have eroded the political power of Hamas, which had not yet given up its vision of taking control of the PLO institutions and from there leading the entire Palestinian people. In practice, the reality of building national institutions “on the road to a state” was established, while at the same time, in light of the fact that the peace process was entering a long deadlock, the Palestinian leadership tried to challenge Israel through unilateral moves within different international institutions.

As early as in 2011, Nu’aman Kanfani, a Palestinian scholar, wrote that Abu Mazen and Salam Fayyad changed the Palestinian strategy. Instead of focusing on the peace process, resources and attentiveness were diverted to the internal arena in order to establish state institutions. Both of them believed that a well-functioning state system can compete with the challenge and the project of state building.⁴⁴ Looking back over a decade, Abbas’s strategy, even after Fayyad’s fall from the public stage, seems to still be dominant in the Palestinian Authority. The Palestinian leadership is not interested in violence (it prefers popular struggle), while the vast majority of the public in Judea and Samaria is unwilling to take part in it and pay a personal price.

2.1. The social-economy aspect

The second component that contributed to the temporary establishment of the arrangements is the Palestinian public. In the past decade there have been significant changes in the character of Palestinian society in Judea and Samaria, especially among the younger generation that has presented more modern faces than in the past. The term “modernization” in the cultural-Palestinian context in Judea and Samaria includes political, social and economic aspects as well as signs of democratization. These were manifested in industrialization, urbanization (the establishment of the new city of Rawabi), a change in the culture of consumption, expansion of education and accumulation of assets, and the free expression of opinions on social networks. The younger generation has moved most of its activities gradually, but consistently, from street protests to online networks. These provide socializing, business promotion, videos, and entertainment.⁴⁵

From 2006 to 2016 there was a 14-fold increase in social networking activity such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.⁴⁶ At the end of 2016, 52 percent of the Palestinians used the Internet, and 58 percent of them noted that social networks had a positive impact on Palestinian society. Most of them also stressed that social networks are the main way to keep up with news and innovations—in lieu of television, radio and the print media − and more than 80 percent said that social networks are first and foremost used for social networking. A Palestinian website that maps social networking activities found that the top search terms among surfers were Facebook, Google and YouTube, and the most viewed site (over 80 million views in 2016) was Cobra 12,347, which also contains entertainment videos.⁴⁷

Social networks, therefore, have become the central stage, if not the only one, for expressing opinions. The Palestinian public frequently uses the Hebrew language appellation “Hashtag” and expresses its opinion on political, military, social, economic, and other issues. The Palestinian youth (78 percent of those aged 15–29) spend most of the day on social networks) is exposed, among other things, to negative phenomena such as attacks around the world, but the vast majority of them do not indulge in terrorist activity. Palestinians who have been involved in terrorism since 2015 have done so individually and without a systematic plan of action or with the guidance of an organized leadership.⁴⁸ In cost-benefit calculations, the online arena is perceived as a safety net, due to the lack of resources it requires and the reduction of the possibility of being harmed (or killed) in protest activities in the field directed against the PA or against Israel. Thus, Palestinian protests in recent years have been carried out mostly on the social networks and are expressed less in stormy demonstrations at points of friction with Israelis throughout Judea and Samaria.

The constant growth of users of social networks is only one expression of modern changes taking place in Palestinian society in Judea and Samaria. An analysis of the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics data reveals a consistent rise in private consumption. The consumption culture is based on taking bank loans and exists mainly in the urban area, where about 70 percent of the residents live. Thus, for example, between 2006 and 2013 private consumption increased from 2.8 billion per year to 4.85 billion dollars. This expenditure includes housing, motor vehicles, medical expenses, and financing of small businesses. This phenomenon is accompanied by the influx of young men and women to Ramallah, which is a magnet for its ability to offer work, entertainment, transportation and fashion. They take a loan from the bank to finance the cost of living in the modern city, which enjoys economic prosperiity

In this new reality, most of the public is forced to adhere to its work in order to repay the loans, which reduces the amount of time available to protest on political or national grounds. The following chart of Figure 1 was published by the Palestinian Monetary Authority in the last quarter of 2014, and it presents the distribution of the Palestinian public’s debt to the banking system, which totaled $ 4.3 billion during that period.

Figure 1. Distribution of the Palestinian public’s debt to the banking system, December 2014 (from the Palestinian monetary authority website).

The Palestinian leadership recognized the political potential of the young classes and proclaimed 2011 as the youth year. This year was marked by campaigns with signs of modernization, which also included advocacy to eradicate violence against women. The young Palestinian generation is portrayed, in a continuous analysis of public opinion surveys, as one that is mostly interested in a quiet life, in purchasing an apartment, finding a place to earn a living, and establishing a family life. This does not mean that national aspirations, realization of self-determination for the Palestinians, and an independent state are not important. They appear in every survey as subjects of interest to the Palestinian public, but matters of livelihood, employment and the economic situation occupy the top places on the public agenda.⁴⁹ Almost 17 percent of the Palestinian labor force was employed in 2015 in Israel: 83,000 within the Green Line and 22,000 in Judea and Samaria. The fact that the livelihood of some 115,000 Palestinians depends on Israeli employers reinforces the argument that maintaining a place and source of livelihood (through Israeli approval) has become a central goal for those employed and reduces the possibility of being diverted toward national protest or violence.

The changes that the Palestinian society underwent in Judea and Samaria are also evident in times of escalation. The prolonged campaign of Protective Edge operation (summer of 2014, 51 days) and the wave of terrorism since September 2015 have not led the public to mass protests against the Israeli presence in Judea and Samaria. The activity of terror remained confined to social margins, and social networks as well as public opinion polls pointed to the reservations of most of the population about the attacks, which in their view did not serve the national idea.⁵⁰ The common profile of most of the perpetrators of the attacks indicated that an overwhelming majority of male terrorists (approximately 82 percent) were young, not involved in terrorist attacks in the past, and not members of terrorist organizations. In most of the cases, they carried out attacks alone, as a result of a personal decision, spontaneously, without instructions from above. In the attacks they carried out, they often used “cold” weapons (knives, sharp objects, vehicles). They were motivated by a combination of national motivations and personal considerations (family problems, personal frustration, psychological and economic distress, women’s gender deprivation, the desire to escape daily hardships, and revenge), and did not drag the Palestinian street into widespread popular protest.⁵¹

The third component on which the current reality is based in Judea and Samaria is Israeli strength, which is expressed in two main areas: one is almost uninterrupted security activity, often conducted in cooperation with the Palestinian security and intelligence services. In the last decade, since 2007, the number of Jews living in Judea and Samaria jumped from 270,000 to 406,000 by the end of 2015, of which one-third are ultra-Orthodox, with high birth rates. The following diagram of Figure 2 shows the new construction starts since 2005, indicating that from this year until the end of 2016 there were more than 25,000 building starts in Judea and Samaria,⁵² which applied to construction only in recognized localities and did not include construction in illegal outposts. This trend of expansion of construction continued in the following years as well.

Table

Year	New building starts
2005	2036
2006	1519
2007	1471
2008	2332
2009	1964
2010	758
2011	1109
2012	1214
2013	2874
2014	1572
2015	1884
2016	2630

Figure 2. Number of building starts in Judea and Samaria, 2005–2013.⁵³

The construction boom, which has gradually and continually changed the demographic balance in Judea and Samaria, has encountered no real resistance from the regional system and the international community. Various Palestinian spokesmen, headed by Abu Mazen, have expressed their condemnation and have claimed that this is an obstacle to achieving a peace settlement; but in fact Israel is not required to pay a significant political, diplomatic or economic price for a policy encouraging expansion of Jewish construction beyond the Green Line. However, it has been precisely during sensitive political periods (2009, 2013) that Israel has frozen the construction for several months. Right-wing elements that opposed the government’s policy threatened a political crisis if the construction did not resume.

The security component of Israeli power is expressed in counterterrorism activities that include detentions and interception of terrorists without real resistance. According to data from the Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Prisoners’ Affairs, between 2011 and 2016, Israel arrested some 30,000 Palestinians in the West Bank, including about 1,400 between the ages of 11 and 18.⁵⁴ In addition, the Israeli thwarting of terror infrastructures whenever intelligence is received about terrorist intentions is routine − including counterterrorism activities in Area A, which, according to the Oslo Accords are under the responsibility of the PA security and civilian authorities. This was the case, for example, when undercover forces entered hospitals in Nablus (October 2015) and Hebron (November 2015) to arrest wanted persons involved in the murder of Jews.⁵⁵

3. Conclusions

Abu Mazen’s entry into the presidential office in Ramallah in January 2005 gradually changed the thinking of the Palestinian leadership—from support for an armed struggle characterized by Arafat’s rule—to a policy of stopping terrorism (although continuing the popular struggle), building state institutions from the bottom up (led by Salam Fayyad), and a diplomatic campaign to present the new face of the Palestinian leadership in 2008. The understanding on the Palestinian side that Israel did not intend to advance the resolution of the conflict led Abu Mazen to adopt a unilateral strategy of action; one of its tactical and symbolic products was recorded in September 2011 when the General Assembly of the United Nations voted to recognize a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders. This move also led to the annexation of Palestine into the United Nations as a non-full observer.

The Palestinian public and the PA leadership have developed an oral understanding that the public recognizes Abu Mazen’s authority to rule in exchange for the PA’s basic economic functioning, provision of government services, and enforcement of law and order. The ability to sustain this quiet understanding over time is a result of the Fayyad plan, which yielded benefits to both sides in the Palestinian arena: Abu Mazen enjoys control without any real opposition in Judea and Samaria and without a political alternative to his rule. The Palestinian public has been constantly improving its quality of life, despite being under the rule of a foreign country. The Hamas campaign of return since the end of March 2018, while unable to include Palestinians in the West Bank, supports this conclusion. However, it is important to recall that most Palestinians (in both Gaza and the W.B.) polled since the conflict began see Hamas as the better faction to advance the needs of the Palestinian people. Most of them also see the Palestinian leadership in Ramallah as corrupt, authoritarian and ineffective. Despite these findings, Abu Mazen did not face any real opposition in the West Bank (either within Fatah or elsewhere) and he is sticking to the integrative approach towards Israel, even if it is fragile.

All these have created a reality in the area in which Israel is in fact the only sovereign in Judea and Samaria in the last decade that works to maintain the calm security and to expand Jewish settlement. Although the quiet routine is violated from time to time when a security escalation is recorded, its analysis shows that most of the Palestinian public in Judea and Samaria is indifferent and not involved in protest and violence.

This Palestinian national struggle is not over yet and is still part of the Palestinian consciousness in Judea and Samaria, even if in the last decade the importance of civilian components among the population has grown, especially in terms of the personal consumption culture. When political conditions evolve, this public will once again mobilize in the national struggle. This time, modern and improved institutional systems stand alongside the public in order to support its realization of a vision shared with the Palestinian leadership.

The situation in the ground supports the hypothesis of this research: the temporary arrangement serves the interests of both sides, now over a decade and a half. Israel, the Palestinian leadership, and the population of the West Bank. This reality of temporary arrangement meets the criteria of integrative approach. In fact, between the two actors − Israel and the Palestinian Authority − there has been an unwritten understanding that reaching a solution to the conflict is not possible soon. The Israeli goal is increasingly to protect the security and lives of the Jewish settlers, in conjunction with expansion of the building, in order to serve Israel’s interest in not giving up the territories of the Land of Israel. The traditional Palestinian interest is an independent Palestinian state, and in order to advance this, the Palestinian Authority has worked over the past decade to lay the foundations of an institutional infrastructure that will serve the future state. Currently, it is a win-win for both sides, but it also puts a significant obstacle in front of “two states for two people” due to the demographic changes, mainly in the Israeli side.

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Additional information

Funding

The author received no direct funding for this research.

Notes

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2. Shaul Mishal. “The pragmatic dimension of the Palestinian Hamas: A network perspective,” Armed Forces & Society 29.4 (2003): 576‏

3. http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-4956276,00.html, 2 May 2017

4. Dean Tjosvold.“Cooperative and competitive goal approach to conflict: Accomplishments and challenges,” Applied Psychology 47.3 (1998): 287‏

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7. Report of the Center for Strategic Studies, Tel Aviv University (1989): 5.

8. Ron Pundak,“Oslo: Twenty years later—a personal and historical look,” 20 years of the Oslo Accords, Tami Steinmetz Center (2014): 6–12.

9. Dan Schueftan, Necessity of Separation: Israel and the Palestinian Entity, University of Haifa and Zmora Bitan (1999): 39.

10. Ibid, 47–48.

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12. Ibid. 294.

13. Uzi Arad,“The Process of Arrangements from Oslo to the Present: A Historical View and a Strategic Perspective,” in: Negotiations with the Palestinians: Deadlock or a Window of Opportunity? (Begin-Sadat Center for Research, Bar-Ilan University, 2014): 20–21.

14. Ya’acov Bar-Siman-Tov, Barriers to peace in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Jerusalem Institution for Israel’s studies, (2010); Shmuel Even, “Twenty Years of the Oslo Accords: Lessons for Israel,” Strategic Assessment, 16, 2 The Institute for National Security Studies (2010): 63–78.

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16. Voice of Palestine Radio, 3 May 2005; Al-Jazeera television, 24 August 2005; Al-Rai Al-’Am newspaper, 3 September 2005.

17. https://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-4956276,00.html, 2 May 2017.

18. Mohammad Nazal, Hamas representative in Jordan, Sawt al-Haqq wal-Huriyyah newspaper, 26 October 1997; Khaled Masha’al, Al-Jazeera television, 2 February 2005; Musa Abu Marzuk, Al-Ayyam newspaper, 6 February 2006.

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24. Shaul Mishai and Avraham Sela, Hamas time: Violence and Compromise Yediot Aharonot, (1999); David Hakham, ”And the country will be full of Hamas (Haifa University, 2006).

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31. Financial Times Newspaper, 14 December 2008.

32. Al-Ayyam newspaper, 30 December 2009.

33. www.Alqudsnews.org, 15 October 2011.

34. Remarks by General Keith Dayton Washington Institute for Near East Policy (2009).

35. Al-Sharq Al-Awsat Newspaper, 1 September 2009: 1.

36. Al-Quds Newspaper, 9 October 2009.

37. Palestinian News Agency, 10 October 2010.

38. Palestinian News Agency, 16 September 2009.

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40. Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda, 31 January 2011.

41. Palestinian News Agency, 8 July 2013; 13 July 2013.

42. Palestinian News Agency, 14 January 2014.

43. Washington Post, 31 May 2015.

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47. socialstudio.me, 2017: 70.

48. General Security Service data of 2015, from: www.shabak.gov.il.

49. The opinion polls of the Institute for Research under the direction of Khalil Shikaki are conducted on a quarterly basis and include a representative sample of the population: www.pcpsr.org. The surveys examined for this study were conducted from March 2013 to December 2014. A survey by the Awrad Institute published in February 2017 reinforces the findings: www.awrad.org.

50. www.pspcr.org, 2016.

51. Information Center for Terrorism, 2017: 2 from: http://www.terrorism-info.org.il/he/.

52. Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics, 2016 annual report.

53. Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics, 2 April 2017.

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55. www.ynet.co.il, 4 October 2015.