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While Palestinians Talk of Protest, Little Sign of Action

(Reuters) Crispian Balmer and Alastair Macdonald - Calls for Palestinian protests to back a diplomatic push for statehood at the UN next month have put Israel on guard. Yet to many, a sustained Intifada, or uprising, appears unlikely. To ordinary Palestinians, the significance of UN maneuvers is hard to fathom, their leaders in the West Bank are wary of violence with Israel, and their national movement remains weakened by a deep schism. To many Palestinian analysts, the idea of an imminent outbreak of widespread insurrection, similar to those that are reshaping the rest of the Arab world, seems fanciful. "There might be some protests," said Zakaria al-Qaq, a Palestinian political analyst. "But not with the size that the Palestinian leadership expects because the people feel they are marginalized. There is a great lack of confidence." On the ground, there are few signs of preparation. "It's meaningless. I talk to people and they make fun of the issue," said Bahaa al-Din Zaid, as he stacked loaves in a bakery. "We don't have the foundations of a state." "People are not interested in this subject - they are interested in making ends meet." Like many Palestinians, he remembers the uprisings of the 1980s and a decade ago as failures. One Fatah organizer in the West Bank said the leadership's call for protests was not serious: "The potential for Palestinian protest is there, but it cannot be the result of government directives."
2011-08-19 00:00:00
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