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West Bank Grows Calmer as Pocketbook Issues Take Priority Over Protests

Abdallah Abu Rahma, a co-founder of a popular resistance movement, says that rather than giving up, he and other protest leaders are focusing on “a different kind of resilience.”Credit...Samar Hazboun for The New York Times

BILIN, West Bank — On a recent weekday, Muhammad Abu Rahma returned to the place where Palestinian protesters and Israeli soldiers used to clash in weekly confrontations that made the West Bank village of Bilin a symbol of resistance against the Israeli occupation.

But this time, he came not to protest but to picnic with his wife and three children. He had served three terms in prison for his activities at the height of the protests. But now, at 33, he had a family and a job as a garbage collector.

“People want money to live, and permits,” he said, referring to the Israeli permits allowing laborers to work in Israel, where they can earn twice as much as they do in the Palestinian territories.

On the surface, his experience seems to confirm the correlation between economic growth and peace — the logic behind the Trump administration’s recent economic conference in Bahrain, which was meant to show the financial benefits awaiting Palestinians if they signed on to the yet-to-be-released Trump peace plan.

But for many Palestinians in the West Bank, the lull in grass-roots protests has less to do with economic optimism than despair.

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A Palestinian protest in the West Bank village of Bilin in 2015 turned into violent clashes.Credit...Abbas Momani/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

They attribute the relative calm that now prevails to a combination of factors, including war weariness and the Israeli military’s harsh response, which resulted in too many killed, wounded or imprisoned and too few achievements.

There is also a pervasive lack of hope for change after five years of impasse in peace talks, a powerful but intransigent Israel and what many Palestinians view as their own feckless and divided leadership, which has failed to deliver on Palestinian statehood.

And they have largely given up on an American role in solving the conflict, seeing the Trump administration as hopelessly biased in favor of Israel.

An opinion poll by the Ramallah-based Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in June found that only 23 percent of Palestinians saw nonviolent resistance as the most effective way of achieving statehood, while three-quarters said the Palestinian leadership should reject the American peace plan.

Ghassan Khatib, a political scientist at Birzeit University in the West Bank, said the old Palestinian political elite’s vision of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel seems unrealistic to the new generation.

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A playground on the spot where an Israeli barrier was removed in Bilin.Credit...Samar Hazboun for The New York Times

“They have no alternative for now, so most of them are staying away from politics,” he said. “Because there are no collective, clear national aspirations, they pay attention to their individual, personal prospects, like jobs and improving their life conditions.”

The Palestinian Authority also does not generally encourage direct confrontation with Israel. Its security coordination with Israel, a pillar of the Oslo peace accords of the 1990s, not only helps prevent attacks against Israel but also helps the authority suppress its militant Islamic rivals.

“It’s very hard to have a culture of resistance if, from the very top, the entire system and leadership is premised on cooperation with the military,” said Nathan Thrall, who leads the International Crisis Group’s Israeli-Palestinian project.

West Bank Palestinians also look at Gaza, where the past year of protests along the boundary fence have taken an enormous toll, with scores killed by Israeli forces but have done little to improve conditions.

Increasingly, Mr. Thrall said, “West Bankers are aspiring to middle-class life with mortgages and car payments.”

JORDAN

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Tel Aviv

Bilin

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refugee camp

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ISRAEL

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By The New York Times

Few see the point in risking their stability, however tenuous, for an abstract goal. Many have taken bank loans to marry, or to buy homes or cars, and in the West Bank a default or bad check can land one in prison.

“People have started talking more about their economic situation than resistance,” said Muhammad Abu Latifa, a resident of the Kalandia refugee camp who spent seven years in jail after he and two friends stabbed an Israeli civilian in a Jerusalem suburb when he was 17.

Now 26 and a student of political science and international relations at Birzeit, Mr. Abu Latifa said he was glad his Israeli victim survived the attack. He criticized the Palestinian Authority for its involvement in monopolies that he said kept prices rising in the West Bank and for nepotism, saying the good public service jobs went to people with connections.

Those problems, he said, along with the unpopular security cooperation, make many youths feel like “they have to confront the Palestinian Authority before the Israelis.”

The change in atmosphere is tangible, with tension and violence subsumed by relative calm and consumerism.

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A protest in Ramallah against the Trump administration’s economic conference in Bahrain last month. Despite calls for clashes, the protests were largely peaceful and confined to Palestinian cities.Credit...Abbas Momani/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The protest spot in Bilin, where Mr. Abu Rahma’s family was having a picnic, has been turned into a park that includes orchards and a playground. The park itself represents a rare victory, sitting on land that had been lost to Israel’s West Bank security barrier and was reclaimed after a long legal battle.

In the nearby village of Nilin, where soldiers once chased masked Palestinian youths carrying slingshots, a shiny new branch of the Bank of Palestine has gone up opposite a stylish clothing store offering its customers, including Israelis, free espresso.

And in the crowded Kalandia refugee camp, a traditional flash point decorated with fading posters of those killed by the Israeli Army, Halima Abu Latifa struggled to remember when the last violent confrontation took place here — a year ago, or was it three? But it was easy for her to recommend a local restaurant: Ali’s, a popular hummus joint.

Abdallah Abu Rahma, 48, a former teacher and co-founder of the Bilin resistance movement, says that rather than giving up, he and other protest leaders have shifted their focus.

He now has a desk job in Ramallah directing a commission that defends Palestinians against threats of Israeli land confiscations and demolitions.

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Palestinian workers crossing a checkpoint in Nilin after a day’s work in Israel. More than 100,000 Palestinians depend on jobs in Israel and in Jewish settlements in the West Bank.Credit...Samar Hazboun for The New York Times

“Now we protest by working the land, building farms, roads, electricity lines, a kindergarten and a playground,” Mr. Abu Rahma said. “It’s a different kind of resilience, to encourage people to remain on the land.”

While the Trump administration heralded its prosperity-first approach as an innovation, the Israeli security establishment has long promoted a direct connection between Palestinian income and stability.

The Israeli agency for Palestinian civilian affairs has issued 86,000 permits for West Bank laborers to work in Israel, the highest number ever. An additional 32,000 Palestinians work legally in West Bank Jewish settlements.

The agency, the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, known as Cogat, has recently softened its restrictions on work permits, sending its officers from village to village to encourage even Palestinians long banned from working in Israel to apply. Hundreds who had been barred, often because a relative had carried out an attack against Israelis, have been removed from the blacklist.

Yet the potential for new eruptions is never far away.

A senior Israeli military official, speaking on the condition of anonymity in line with army rules, said that the West Bank remains volatile, that many potential attacks are thwarted by Israeli security forces, and that there is always a danger of violence spilling over from Gaza.

And the subdued calm, many Palestinians say, should not be mistaken for acceptance.

Salah Khawaja, a coordinator for the Popular Campaign against the Wall and the Settlements, told the official Voice of Palestine radio last week that there was a need for a new “mutual vision on how to mobilize popular efforts” to combat the Israeli occupation.

Palestinians need “a new model,” he said, but still, “popular resistance is the best way for fighting against Israel’s measures.”

Mohammed Najib contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 4 of the New York edition with the headline: As Weary Protesters Turn to Pocketbook Issues, West Bank Quiets. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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