Jerusalem Post

[Jay]

(News posts are being done as Palestine)​

 

[Jay]

RAMALLAH — Leaders from across the fractured Palestinian political landscape converged here Thursday for an emergency session that organizers described as the most significant gathering of rival factions since the death of Yasir Arafat, as public fury over the collapse of peace negotiations with Israel boiled over into the streets of the West Bank.

The meeting, convened in a guarded government compound in the heart of Ramallah, brought together representatives of Fatah, Hamas, and armed militant groups that have spent years at odds over strategy, territory, and the very question of whether negotiation with Israel remains a viable path. By evening, officials emerging from the talks announced a rare point of consensus with a broad, if uneasy, backing for Marwan Barghouti to assume the leadership vacated by Arafat's death in 2004.

The announcement came against a backdrop of mounting anger. Palestinian officials accused Israel's government, now returned to the leadership of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, of once again abandoning commitments toward Palestinian statehood, a charge that has become a familiar refrain through successive rounds of failed diplomacy but one that carried unusual weight Thursday given the scale of public reaction.

"We have watched promise after promise dissolve," said Barghouti who left the talks saying he had an enormous responsibility on his shoulders. "There is a limit to how many times a people can be told to wait."

Militant factions, emboldened by the collapse of talks, used the Ramallah meeting to press for what several described as a "firm response" to what they characterized as ongoing violations by Israeli forces, singling out repeated tensions at the Temple Mount, known to Muslims as Haram al-Sharif, as a particular flashpoint. Israeli security officials have in recent weeks expanded checkpoints and patrols around Jerusalem's Old City, a move Palestinian leaders say has inflamed an already volatile atmosphere rather than calmed it.

Even so, the emergence of a unifying figure appeared, at least for the moment, to have a stabilizing effect. Streets in Ramallah and several other West Bank cities, which had seen days of agitated protest, were reported calmer by nightfall, with residents describing a cautious sense that Palestinian politics might finally speak with one voice after years of paralysis.

Analysts cautioned that the coalition remains fragile. The factions gathered in Ramallah have clashed for years over questions of governance, security cooperation, and the use of armed resistance, and Thursday's agreement did not resolve those underlying disputes so much as paper over them in the face of a shared grievance.

"This is unity born of frustration, not of agreement," said Hanan Ashrawia a member of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). "The test will come in the weeks ahead, when the hard questions about strategy and legitimacy return to the table."

The developments in Ramallah come at a moment of renewed uncertainty across the region. With Mr. Netanyahu back in office in Jerusalem and Israeli officials showing no indication of reviving statehood talks, Palestinian leaders across the political spectrum said Thursday that they saw little choice but to present a united front, whatever the strategy that unity ultimately produces.

For now, officials in Ramallah say the immediate priority is consolidating support behind new leadership and containing the anger in the streets before it hardens into something neither the factions nor their new figurehead can control.