West Bank welcomes Hamas back with excitement - and apprehension

Hamas, long suppressed in the West Bank because of its feud with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, staged comeback parties in several cities here over the last two days in celebration of its 25th anniversary and victory in last month’s Gaza war.    

For the first time in five years, thousands of Hamas supporters flooded central Nablus yesterday, waving green Islamist banners and miniature rockets symbolizing those fired from Gaza at Israeli cities, giving voice to fiery rhetoric not heard in this town since the second intifada of the early 2000s.

"We will pledge to purify our people from all Zionist rhetoric," shouted a speaker in Nablus yesterday. "Your objective: resistance. Your leaders: Hamas. Your wish: to die in the name of God… Create a volcano among the Israelis."

Yesterday's demonstration, together with similar celebrations sanctioned by Mr. Abbas’ government planned for today in Ramallah and Hebron, signal just how much Hamas’s stature in the region has grown since the war, which lifted Palestinian morale and even spurred new hopes for a political reconciliation between long feuding Fatah and Hamas. Such rallies would have previously been shut down by Palestinian security forces.

But the Islamist renewal in the West Bank has also been accompanied by an uptick in clashes with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), spurring questions in Israel about whether the sides have reached the threshold of a new Palestinian uprising. Some analysts believe years of calm and stability in the West Bank are coming to an end.  

Around the same time as the Nablus demonstration, hundreds of Palestinian youth in Hebron clashed with Israeli soldiers after the funeral of a local teenager who was killed by the IDF two days ago. According to the army, the minor attacked a solder with a fake gun, which a second soldier who opened fire believed to be real. Israel Radio reported today that security forces were bracing themselves for a new round of clashes following weekly prayer services.

Nathan Thrall, a Middle East analyst with the International Crisis Group, says tensions began rising after Palestinian protests against economic austerity measures several months ago. Those protests first were directed at the PA, and then at Israel.

"Tensions really have increased since the Gaza war. It’s clear that there’s less restraint than there had been a month ago," he says. "Protests had already started in September, when people had been challenging the PA and Israel in a way they hadn’t in some time. The Gaza war continued that."

Reconciliation or politics?

Participants in the Nablus rally yesterday seemed limited to Islamists, and the turnout was only a fraction of the hundreds of thousands who attended anniversary celebrations of the militant group in Gaza, which Hamas has controlled since a takeover in 2007. The remarkable thing about it was that it happened at all. For the last few years, the Palestinian Authority has been arresting Hamas activists and shutting down Islamist charity groups.

Analysts see the switch as a sign that the PA is bowing to the growing stature of Hamas. Both Fatah and Hamas have allowed their rivals to hold political demonstrations in the area under control, to make gestures toward reconciliation. But few observers believe the conditions have ripened for a true end to the rift.

"The victory in Gaza has created a lot of interest in Hamas and its strategy in the West Bank," says Khulud el-Masry, a participant in the Nablus rally whose Islamic non-profit was once shuttered by the PA. "I feel now that this has began the process of reconciliation, and when the there is reconciliation, our program will triumph over the others."

1 | 2

Next