From Ramallah: What happened last week?

I've been thinking about my last post and trying to get a better grasp on the significance of what has happened here over the last few weeks. As I wrote about before, I’m intuitively a little uncomfortable with the media coverage I’ve been seeing. It seems to exaggerate the sense of tension and the significance of specific actions taken by Fatah and Hamas. But I feel strange saying that, because clearly developments over the past few weeks are hugely significant.

I was talking to Martin, one of my friend's roommates, yesterday about what he thought. Martin's a Brit who just made a short documentary about Marwan Barghouti and seems to be tuned into the political situation. Most Palestinians, especially those in Ramallah, are happy that Hamas is out of the government, because it means that Western aid will return. What they have learned over the past year and a half, Martin said, is that if they elect the wrong party, they will be isolated and essentially starved into submission. If they elect the party supported by Israel and the U.S. they will not see their political goals realized – or even pursued, really – but their government will be able to pay salaries and they’ll be able to eat. Fatah was voted out in 2006, because the Palestinian people didn't trust them. Many Palestinians welcome the new Fatah-controlled government not because that perception has changed but because every other option is unbearable.

What happened this week, then, was the confirmation of the Palestinians’ powerlessness. They tried, through a democratic process, to replace a corrupt party that had failed them in the Oslo peace process, and things only got worse. Now the hope of a two-state solution is essentially gone, and so too, perhaps, is the hope that Palestinian politicians can bring any of the things the Palestinians want – an end to the occupation, settlements and assassinations, release of prisoners, etc.

This is just one of many reasons why the actions of Hamas and Fatah over the past few weeks matter, and so it makes sense that the media are following them closely. But it’s the sense of chaos they presented that, I think, missed the point and exaggerated the government's power. Chaos in this weak government does not translate into chaos in the West Bank generally. Life here over the past few days doesn’t feel chaotic at all, and my sense is that’s because the Palestinian government has so little power, and, although the fatal bullet may have come this week, the hope of a viable state had been dying for a long time.

There is so much going on here apart from the Palestinian government that has an enormous impact on the lives of Palestinians and the prospects for peace. Where is the coverage of civil society and the effects of the occupation? Americans know so little about Palestinians, yet so many of us have such strong feelings about how the Israel and the United States should treat them.