Region

By Claire Gounon
Agence France-Presse


OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has wrapped up a whistle-stop Middle East tour aimed at consolidating a ceasefire between Israel and Gaza militants. What can we now expect?

Is the ceasefire holding?

The Egyptian-brokered ceasefire that went into force early Friday has so far held, ending 11 days of devastating Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip and rocket fire into Israel.

Jamal Al Fadi, a Palestinian politics professor in Gaza, said he thought both sides would be reluctant to enter "a new round of confrontation, due to the political, economic, and moral losses it may cause".

Israeli analyst Efraim Inbar said a long-term ceasefire was in the "Israeli interest".

Israeli air strikes and artillery fire on Gaza killed 254 Palestinians including 66 children and some fighters from May 10, the Gaza authorities says.

Rocket and other fire from Gaza claimed 12 lives in Israel, including one child, an Arab-Israeli teenager, and an Israeli soldier, medics say.

How fast can Gaza rebuild?

The Israeli bombardment of Gaza has ravaged homes and businesses as well as key power and water networks in the already impoverished enclave, which has been under Israeli blockade since 2007.

Some 258 buildings, comprising 1,042 housing and commercial units, have been completely destroyed, authorities in Gaza say, while the United Nations says at least 6,000 people have been made homeless.

The UN says it has released millions of dollars for its humanitarian response and other countries such as Qatar, Egypt and the United States have pledged millions more in aid.

Relief convoys have entered the territory from Israel and Egypt.

But Israel insists any reconstruction aid be channelled through the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority, so none reaches Gaza's Islamist rulers Hamas.

Israel has also kept a tight control on what materials can enter the territory of some 2 million people to limit Hamas's ability to rearm.

Israel has for example insisted that donors only fund projects using plastic piping for water and sewage for fear that Hamas could use metal ones to make rockets.

But a factory making such plastic pipes outside Gaza City was damaged by Israeli shelling this month.

The war is the fourth to have pummelled the enclave since 2008.

Father-of-six Ramez Al Masri said it had taken him three years to rebuild his home in the Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanun after it was demolished in the last Israeli military campaign in 2014.

This month, an Israeli air strike again reduced it to rubble.

"Will it now take me another three years to rebuild?" he asked.

What about the West Bank?

Even if the fighting in and around Gaza has ended, tensions still simmer in Israeli-occupied  East Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank.

Just hours before Blinken flew in on Tuesday, Israeli forces killed a young Palestinian during an arrest raid near the West Bank city of Ramallah, while the previous day Israeli forces shot dead a 17-year-old Palestinian after he allegedly stabbed two Israelis, including a soldier, in Jerusalem.

Following talks in Ramallah with Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas on Tuesday, Blinken promised Washington would mend ties and reopen the US consulate in East Jerusalem for the first time since Donald Trump shuttered it in 2019.

He also evoked the long-term "possibility of resuming the effort to achieve a two-state solution".

But any such return to formal peace talks is likely to remain a distant prospect.

Will there be a new peace process?

Since the last talks collapsed in 2014, Israeli politics has become increasingly dominated by right-wing and far-right parties vehemently opposed to Palestinian statehood.

This month's conflict has, if anything, made a return to talks even less likely.

Hamas, anathema to Israelis because of its founding charter's call for the destruction of Israel, has burnished its reputation as champion of the Palestinian cause, while Abbas, now 85, has been largely sidelined.

"Hamas today, as a result of field performance and popular sympathy, feels strong, and will work to strengthen its position by opening up more in its regional and international relations," said Fadi.

The Islamist group seems to want to "enhance its position and perhaps its role as a representative of the Palestinians" in both Gaza and the West Bank, he said.

Inbar said a return to any sort of peace process was unlikely any time soon.

"The Palestinian Authority has no legitimacy whatsoever," he said. "We have no partners."



TEHRAN — Iran's supreme leader on Thursday urged voters to ignore boycott calls and turned a deaf ear to criticism over the rejection of all but mainly ultraconservative hopefuls for next month's presidential election.

Iranians are set to elect a successor to President Hassan Rouhani on June 18 amid widespread discontent over a deep economic and social crisis, and after the violent repression of waves of protests in the winter of 2017-18 and in 2019.

The opposition based outside Iran has for months run a campaign on social media networks calling on Iranians to stay away from the polls, using hashtags in Persian such as #NototheIslamicRepublic.

"Do not pay attention to those who are campaigning and saying it is useless to go to the polls and that one should not go to the polls," supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told lawmakers in a speech via videoconference, according to his official Instagram account.

Khamenei's declaration comes a day after Rouhani said he had asked the supreme leader to intervene to ensure greater "competition" in the presidential election.

The Islamic republic's candidate-vetting Guardian Council on Tuesday approved seven mainly ultraconservative candidates to run in the election from a field of about 600 hopefuls.

The council -- a conservative-dominated, unelected body -- disqualified moderate conservative Ali Larijani and first vice-president Eshaq Jahangiri, as well as firebrand former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The move appears to have cleared the way for a strong run by ultraconservative judiciary chief Ebrahim Raisi.

But it also unleashed a flood of criticism of the Guardian Council and is expected to lead to an increase in voter abstention.

Raisi 'unrivalled' 

Rouhani, who is constitutionally barred from running for a third consecutive term, said on Wednesday he had sent a letter to Khamenei asking for a revision of the list of approved candidates.

He warned that "the heart of elections is competition. If you take that away it becomes a corpse."

The president also warned of the risk of low voter turnout and said the system's "continued legitimacy" was at stake.

"If the candidates can prove to the people that they are effective, the people will come to the polls and the turnout will be high, God willing," Khamenei said on Thursday.

A record 57 per cent of Iranians stayed away from legislative elections in February last year after thousands of candidates, many of them moderates and reformists, were disqualified.

The poll comes at a critical time amid talks with world powers aimed at reviving a 2015 nuclear deal that offered sanctions relief in return for Iran's agreement to tighten controls on its nuclear programme.

The accord has been on life support since then-US president Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew from it in 2018 and re-imposed crippling sanctions on the Islamic republic.

Iran, which retaliated against the US move by rolling back its nuclear commitments, is seeking the lifting of the sanctions.

Larijani, an adviser to Khamenei and former parliamentary speaker, was seen as the only person capable of challenging Raisi, who is now considered the "unrivalled candidate", according to the reformist newspaper Etemad.

Raisi won 38 per cent of the vote in the 2017 presidential election but was defeated by Rouhani.

The judiciary chief says the priority is to secure the lifting of US sanctions -- implying that, if he wins, he will keep Iran in the nuclear agreement.

Khamenei, who endorsed the continuation of the nuclear talks to secure the lifting of sanctions, took the issue out of the equation for the candidates in his remarks on Thursday.

"I've heard it said that... candidates should speak... on foreign policy. No!" the supreme leader said.

"The main problem of the people is youth unemployment," he said, adding that "candidates must talk about [such issues] when they address the people."

DAMASCUS — Polls opened across Syria on Wednesday for a presidential election in which few doubt Bashar Assad will extend his grip on power for a fourth term, in a war-battered country mired in economic crisis.

The controversial vote is the second election since the start of a decade-long civil war, that has killed more than 388,000 people and displaced half the pre-war population.

Huge election posters glorifying Assad have mushroomed across the two-thirds of the country under government rule.

With opponents abroad barred from standing and no voting in the swathes of territory outside his control, Assad faces two virtually unknown challengers.

The state SANA news agency SANA declared voting had started as planned at 7:00am (04:00 GMT) and state television showed long queues forming amid tight security.

Hundreds of students clamoured to vote outside Damascus University. 

 “I came to vote for Bashar Assad because he is the only man who withstood 10 years of war,” said 26-year-old Kinan Al Khatib.

Around him, students chanted the slogan used to express support for strongmen around the Arab world: “With our blood and with our souls, we sacrifice our lives for you, Bashar.”

Syrians can cast their ballots at more than 12,000 polling stations, and results are expected to be announced by Friday evening, 48 hours after polls close.

The election takes place amid the lowest levels of violence since 2011 — but with an economy in freefall.

More than 80 per cent of the population live below the poverty line, and the Syrian pound has plunged in value against the dollar, causing skyrocketing inflation.

Assad’s campaign slogan, “Hope through work”, evokes the colossal reconstruction needed to rebuild the country, requiring billions of dollars in funding.

‘Tolerated opposition’

Assad, a 55-year-old ophthalmologist by training, was first elected by referendum in 2000 after the death of his father Hafez, who had ruled Syria for 30 years.

He faces former state minister Abdallah Salloum Abdallah and Mahmud Merhi, a member of the so-called “tolerated opposition”, long dismissed by exiled opposition leaders as an extension of the regime.

“I don’t know the other candidates at all and I respect their nomination but my vote will definitely go to Assad,” Khatib said.

Assad has refrained from holding campaign media events and interviews. 

 But he issued a general amnesty for thousands of prisoners earlier this month, on top of a series of decrees that aim to improve economic conditions.  

Interior Minister Mohammad Khaled Al Rahmoun said on Tuesday that 18 million Syrians at home and abroad were eligible to vote.

Last week, thousands of Syrians abroad with the right paperwork cast early ballots in their embassies.

But those who had fled the country illegally — and so who could not show an exit stamp in their passport — were barred from voting. 

 Several countries that oppose Assad blocked the vote altogether, including Turkey and Germany, which host large Syrian refugee populations. 

‘Farce’

The United States and the European Union said Tuesday the election was “neither free nor fair”, and Syria’s fragmented opposition has called the polls a “farce”.

But they will watch powerless as Assad prepares to renew his grip on power. 

 In rebel-held northwestern Syria, home to 3 million people, opposition activists distributed mock campaign posters ridiculing Assad.

Kurdish authorities, who have carved out an autonomous zone in the northeast, said they are “not concerned” with the election. 

 In the last multicandidate poll in 2014, Assad took 88 per cent of the vote. 

 It was Syria’s first contested election in nearly 50 years, after Assad and his father Hafez repeatedly renewed their mandates by referendum. 

 It took place as the war raged, with the air force bombing rebel areas of second city Aleppo and fierce fighting in Hama, Idlib and Daraa, as well as the capital Damascus.

This time around, the front lines are relatively quiet.

“Assad is running the risk of being the only certainty in a country in ruins,” a European diplomat said.

MARRAKESH, Morocco — Horse master Joel Proust hopes his stallions will soon return to the movie sets in Morocco that made his name, ranging from Hollywood epics to “Game of Thrones”.

The North African nation’s dramatic desert sands and palm-filled valleys traversed by camel herds have long provided stand-ins for big-budget film sets needing Middle East locations, but coronavirus restrictions have hit the industry hard.

Last year was “difficult”, Proust said, at an equestrian centre on the outskirts of Marrakesh, where the thundering of hooves announces the sudden arrival of a herd.

The horses — including Arab-Barbs, Friesians and Spanish purebreds — gallop, trot and play dead as they follow their instructor. 

 The 65-year-old Frenchman has for four decades choreographed equestrian action scenes for some of the biggest movies shot in Morocco.

They include Oliver Stone’s swashbuckling “Alexander” in 2004, and Ridley Scott’s Crusade-epic “Kingdom of Heaven” in 2005.

Proust has fond memories of Stephen Sommers’ Egyptian horror fantasy “The Mummy” in 1999, which saw “200 horses galloping at full speed”. 

 But amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Morocco’s borders remain closed to 54 countries, including Britain and France, until at least June 10, according to the civil aviation authority.

Last year, “we did a Moroccan tourism advert and a single film production, when normally we do 10 a year,” the former stuntman said, wearing a T-shirt and jodhpurs.

He says he is readying for three big international productions, including Kevin Scott Frakes’ film adaptation of “The Alchemist”, by Brazilian author Paulo Coelho.

“We hope that the country will open its borders,” Proust said. “If not, things will get complicated.”

 Since the 1950s, Morocco has welcomed international filmmakers, from Alfred Hitchcock to Pier Paolo Pasolini and Orson Welles.

Proust arrived in the kingdom in the early 1980s as an equestrian instructor, and began his career as a stuntman not long after.  

For Martin Scorsese’s 1997 mega-production “Kundun”, on the life of the Dalai Lama, he faced a particular challenge.

“I had to teach 40 Tibetans how to ride,” said Proust, who has a story to tell from every movie.

On location in southern Ouarzazate for smash-hit fantasy series “Game of Thrones”, he recalled a dramatic scene with British actress Emilia Clarke, who played the “Mother of Dragons”, Daenerys Targaryen.

“At the last minute, the director decided that an army of 200 extras had to strike the ground with their lances at the moment she passed through on her horse,” he said. “The terrible noise disoriented the animal.” 

 In order to finish the scene, he suggested the actors “make it seem like they were hitting the ground” instead. The sound of the spears was added in later.

He said he gave riding lessons to Johnny Depp and Robert Pattinson for Ciro Guerra’s “Waiting for The Barbarians” (2019).

And for “Alexander”, he said Irish actor Colin Farrell had to spend a fortnight doing military training in a camp near Marrakesh. 

 “He managed to slip out one night to come and have a drink with us,” Proust said.

 Morocco has sought to attract big international productions in recent years by capitalising on its diverse natural landscapes and providing financial incentives.

SOUSSE, Tunisia — With its economy hit hard by the pandemic, Tunisia is counting on Russians and eastern Europeans to salvage its tourist sector whose employees fear hunger more than COVID-19. 

 “The need to work is stronger than the fear of being contaminated,” said lifeguard Aymen Abdallah, glancing at a half-empty beach in the Mediterranean resort of Sousse where Russians are making a comeback.  

“If we don’t work, we’ll starve to death,” added Abdallah, donning sunglasses and a mask.

The lifeguard is relieved to be back at work after an idle eight months. But “normally, the beach would have been full at this time,” he sighed. 

 The North African country reopened its borders to tour operators in late April but then ordered a new week-long partial lockdown at the start of May because of a spike in coronavirus cases.

Up to 10 flights a week, mostly from Russia and eastern Europe, have in the past month been touching down at Enfidha, an airport serving Tunisia’s tourism towns.

But revenues are down more than 60 per cent on 2019, before the pandemic hit. 

 Hotels are authorised to operate at 50 per cent of capacity but are struggling to reach that level.

“There’s not much profit with just 30 per cent hotel occupancy,” lamented Adel Mlayah, deputy director of the high-end Mouradi Palace in Sousse.

The hotel normally employs at least 260 staff, but this year no more than 120 are working.

‘Not scared’

Eastern Europe also came to the rescue after the 2015 attacks on the capital’s Bardo Museum and in Sousse that killed 60 people, all but one of them tourists, bringing the crucial sector of Tunisia’s economy to its knees. 

 While visitors from most West countries are deterred from travel by their governments, those from Russia, the Czech Republic and Poland appeared to have few such qualms.

“There are not that many countries where we can go,” said Andrej Radiokove, newly arrived from Moscow.

“Turkey closed its borders — that’s why we chose Tunisia.”

Like most of the others in his tour group, he has not been vaccinated. 

 “We had COVID two months ago, so we’re not scared,” he said.

Only around 2 per cent of Tunisia’s population has so far been vaccinated. 

 The pandemic has claimed more than 12,000 lives in the country of 12 million people. But the high local toll does not appear to have deterred the sun-seekers.

Around the pool of the Mouradi Palace, a clutch of them swayed to the rhythm of Russian electronic music.

“Customers from eastern Europe are less than reticent, less concerned about the pandemic,” said Zied Maghrebi, marketing director of the nearby Movenpick hotel.

“We have fallen back on these customers because they’re not afraid to travel.” 

Battered economy

Serafim Stoynovski, a 22-year-old Bulgarian law student, explained that he chose Tunisia because “restrictions here are not as strict” as in other countries. 

 “We can go out for a walk, go to a restaurant or have a coffee if we want,” he said.

Unlike other tourists who have to self-isolate for five to seven days in government-assigned hotels at their own expense, those in tour groups only need a negative PCR test.

Excursions, however, are restricted to tours organised by travel agents who adhere to health protocols, said Sousse Tourism Commissioner Taoufik Gaied.

He is holding out hope for 1 million tourists in 2021, still just a fraction of the 9 million who came two years ago.

A decade since its 2011 revolution, Tunisia’s economic woes have been compounded by the coronavirus pandemic and lockdown measures. 

 The International Monetary Fund expects the country’s economy will grow 3.8 per cent this year, making up little of the ground lost by an unprecedented 8.9 per cent contraction in 2020.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — US top diplomat Antony Blinken on Tuesday vowed support to help rebuild the battered Gaza Strip and shore up a truce between Hamas and Israel, but insisted the territory's Islamist rulers would not benefit from any aid.

Blinken's tour, which started in Israel and will also take him to neighbouring Egypt and Jordan, comes as unrest still grips parts of occupied East Jerusalem after Friday's ceasefire ended 11 days of fighting in and around the Gaza Strip.

At a joint news conference in Jerusalem with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ahead of talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas later in the West Bank, Blinken warned that Washington would not allow international aid to rebuild impoverished Gaza to benefit Hamas.

"We'll work with our partners closely, with all, to ensure that Hamas does not benefit from the reconstruction assistance," Blinken said.

Netanyahu warned that Israel would respond very strongly if Hamas violated the truce.

"If Hamas breaks the calm and attacks Israel, our response will be very powerful," the Israeli premier said.

Blinken, who said earlier his trip would aim to support "efforts to solidify a ceasefire", had no contacts with Hamas, which is blacklisted as a terror group by Washington and most other Western governments.

"The United States fully supports Israel's right to defend itself," he reiterated.

US President Joe Biden said Blinken would meet "with Israeli leaders about our ironclad commitment to Israel's security", as well as seeking to rebuild ties with the Palestinians.

Blinken on Sunday reaffirmed US support for a two-state solution as the only way to provide hope to Israelis and Palestinians that they can live "with equal measures of security, of peace and dignity".

His remarks about "equal measures" for Israelis and Palestinians seemed to shift the tone from Donald Trump's administration, which cut aid to the Palestinian Authority and unveiled a Middle East peace plan with strong Israeli backing but no support from Palestinians.

In Jerusalem, Blinken said Israelis and Palestinians faced an uphill struggle to restore trust, after conflict in Gaza and unrest in the West Bank.

“There’s lots of hard work ahead to restore hope, respect and some trust across the communities,” the US top diplomat said.

“But we’ve seen the alternative and I think that should cause all of us to redouble our efforts to preserve the peace and improve the lives of Israelis and Palestinians alike.”

Israeli air strikes and artillery fire on Gaza killed 253 Palestinians, including 66 children and wounded over 1,900 people in 11 days of conflict from May 10, the health ministry in Gaza says.

Rocket and other fire from Gaza claimed 12 lives in Israel, including one child and an Arab-Israeli teenager, an Israeli soldier, one India national and two Thai workers, medics say. Some 357 people in Israel were wounded.

Mass arrests

Blinken’s visit comes as the ceasefire holds but tensions simmer in Israel and the rest of the occupied Palestinian territories.

Hours before Blinken’s arrival, Israeli forces killed a Palestinian in the occupied West Bank, Palestinian and Israeli security sources said.

The man was killed during an Israeli arrest raid on Al Amara refugee camp near Ramallah, the sources said.

In East Jerusalem, Israeli police said an attacker stabbed two young Israeli men on Monday before police shot him dead. The army said one of those wounded was a soldier.

Palestinian news agency WAFA identified the casualty as a 17-year-old Palestinian high school student.

In the night of Sunday to Monday, Israeli forces rounded up 43 Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, the Palestinian Prisoners Club said.

Israeli forces, who operate in East Jerusalem, said late Sunday that they had arrested 1,550 suspects and had charged 150 over the past two weeks in connection with the “violent events”.

Peace talks have stalled since 2014, including over the status of East Jerusalem and Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

The latest military escalation started after bloody clashes in Jerusalem’s Al Aqsa Mosque compound, Islam’s third holiest site, which is also revered by Jews as the Temple Mount.

Israeli forces had moved in on Palestinian worshippers at the site, towards the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

They had also sought to quell protests against the threatened eviction of Palestinian families from homes in the east Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah to make way for Jewish settlers.

UM GARGOUR, Sudan — Peacekeepers formerly posted to Darfur and hailing from Ethiopia's conflict-hit Tigray region are requesting asylum in Sudan for fear of "torture" and "ethnic cleansing" back home, they have told AFP.

The personnel were due to be repatriated in line with a withdrawal from Sudan of the joint United Nations-African Union mission in Darfur (UNAMID), after its mandate ended on December 31.

But the UN said earlier this month around 120 former peacekeepers had sought "international protection".

AFP spoke to several of these Tigrayan peacekeepers at Um Gargour camp in eastern Sudan, where they have found interim sanctuary.

Halka Haqous, 47, a commander of the group that requested asylum, said he did not want to be repatriated “because of discrimination and ethnic cleansing in Tigray” region in northern Ethiopia.

He blamed Ethiopia’s government for the conflict, which erupted in early November, when the country’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed sent troops to detain and disarm leaders of the regional ruling party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF).

Abiy, winner of the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize, said the move came in response to TPLF attacks on federal army camps.

While he vowed the conflict would be brief, fighting continues and world leaders are warning of humanitarian catastrophe.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced from their homes and over 60,000 fled into Sudan.

Rights groups have repeatedly alleged that Eritrean troops, operating in support of federal Ethiopian forces in Tigray, have perpetrated atrocities against civilians.

“All of the families from Tigray have been displaced,” said 40-year-old officer Arqawi Mahari.

“I don’t know where my father and mother are. A lot of rapes and other horrible crimes have been committed.”

“We are ethnic Tigrayans, that’s why they [Ethiopian troops] were oppressing us and telling us we were working for the TPLF,” Ferwini, 29, a peacekeeper who provided her first name only, told AFP.

“If I go back to Ethiopia they would kill me or torture me — that’s why I’ve asked for asylum in Sudan,” she added.

An Ethiopian military spokesman could not immediately be reached for comment on Tuesday.

Abiy’s government has said it is committed to investigating allegations of atrocities in Tigray, and has denied claims it is discriminating against Tigrayans.

Sudan meanwhile is locked in disputes with Addis Ababa over a contentious border zone, and Ethiopia’s construction of a massive hydro-electric project on the Blue Nile.

Downstream Sudan and Egypt see the dam as a major threat to their water supply.

RAMALLAH, Palestinian Territories — The latest escalation in the Middle East conflict served to unite the geographically fragmented Palestinian community in a way not seen in years, analysts say.

From the blockaded Gaza Strip to the occupied West Bank and occupied  East Jerusalem to Arab-Israelis living inside Israel, scattered people pulled closer together.

A sea of Palestinian flags flew in solidarity rallies, especially during “Day of Rage” protests and a general strike on May 18 that cut across separate areas.

Administrative offices, schools and businesses closed across the West Bank to protest the bombardment of Gaza but also against expanding Jewish settlements in the occupied territories.

In a rare move, the shutters also came down in East Jerusalem, the part of the Holy City annexed by Israel, and in Arab-Israeli population centres such as Nazareth and Acre.

“To see every single Palestinian community rise up together, this is extremely rare,” said Salem Barahmeh, director of the Palestine Institute for Public Diplomacy.

“To go on a national strike and protest and to have the Palestinian diaspora also involved, that’s pretty historic,” he said, referring to rallies by Palestinians abroad.

Scattered communities 

Palestinians have long demanded their own state, with East Jerusalem as its capital, but for now the community is fragmented, with each part facing a different reality.

In the latest confrontation, Israeli bombs rained down on Gaza, the blockaded coastal enclave of 2 million ruled by Islamist group Hamas, who had fired rockets at Israel.

The escalation was sparked by clashes between Israeli police and Palestinians at East Jerusalem’s Al Aqsa Mosque compound, one of Islam’s holiest sites that is also sacred to Jews.

The ensuing violence also spread to the West Bank, where Israeli forces are largely in charge but the Palestinian Authority led by the secular Fateh movement has limited control.

More than 25 Palestinians were killed in West Bank clashes.

Inter-communal violence also flared in Israeli areas where Jews and Arabs usually live side by side.

An Arab-Israeli, Mussa Hassuna, was killed in a confrontation between Jewish nationalists and young Arabs in Lod, in central Israel.

Israeli Arabs are the descendants of Palestinians who stayed on their land after the creation of Israel in 1948.

‘Fight for legitimacy’ 

The fragmentation has long served to “ensure that there is no full Palestinian engagement geographically, socially and politically”, said Barahmeh, who is based in Ramallah in the West Bank.

“While Gaza is mired in poverty, the West Bank after successive intifadas [uprisings] has seen liberal economic policies and the emergence of a middle class that at times seems less politically engaged,” he said.

Gaza’s rulers Hamas, unlike Fatah, do not recognise Israel and the group is considered a “terrorist” organisation by the US and EU.

Arab-Israelis, a minority of about 20 per cent in Israel, meanwhile face their own unique challenges, said Amal Jamal, political science professor at Tel Aviv University.

“Palestinians in Israel are realistic, they have been living with Jews for decades, they understand the Israeli psyche, politics, culture, they speak Hebrew fluently,” he said.

“Palestinians in Israel are fighting for their legitimacy, to be part of the political system, part of the decision making, in order to lead to a solution to the Palestinian problem.”

Mariam Barghouti, a researcher and Palestinian activist, said that in the wider community “each person has a different experience with the Israeli state and that creates isolation for different communities.”

“It breaks the ability to relate to each other and our experiences.”

‘Start of something’ 

But amid the recent surge in violence, Barghouti said, Arab-Israelis found themselves confronted by “people shouting ‘death to Arabs’ and attacking Palestinians with weapons”.

They realised that “it’s not just a West Bank problem, not just a Gaza problem”, said Barghouti. “It is an apartheid problem, a colonial problem, it’s an Israeli state problem.”

The US-based group Human Rights Watch and Israel’s B’Tselem recently accused Israel of running an “apartheid” system — a charge strongly rejected by Israel.

Jamal also said that the recent flare-up “made everybody feel how Palestinian they are. But there is a big difference between the sentiment and the political will or political orientation”.

Palestinians have been politically divided between Hamas and its rival Fateh, which has seen splinter groups emerge.

Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas of Fateh had recently called the first Palestinian elections in 15 years this year.

But he then indefinitely postponed the polls, blaming voting restrictions in East Jerusalem, which led Hamas to accuse Abbas of perpetrating a “coup”.

Despite those divisions, a sense of common Palestinian identity has been strengthened, said Barahmeh.

“You see people coming out together in a unified manner, speaking the same language... protesting the same system, projecting the same identity,” he said.

“Everything we see tells us that there is a form of unity. Is it fully formed? No... But I think it’s the start of something.”