Here’s Looking at You: The Arab Spring and Violence in Gaza, Israel and the West Bank

Abstract

On the ‘‘Arab street’’—a locution according to Rashid Khalidi ‘‘used to denigrate thepeople of the region’’ and one that ‘‘should now be permanently retired’’ (Khalidi,2011b)—the Israeli-Palestinian conflict appears to have lost its appeal as the proverbialwhipping boy of autocratic rulers. Demands for local accountability bolstered by new-found empowerment signal a shift in collective priorities, as ‘‘waves of anti-Israel protests[that] would wash over the capitals of Arab and Muslim states’’ (Eldar, 2011) fail, atleast momentarily, to materialize. While large swaths of the Arab-world focus on settingtheir domestic house in order, Palestinians and Israelis appear to be paying attention.The ostensible effects, bearing in mind processes set in motion prior to the Arab-Spring,include rising Palestinian discontent with Hamas and Fatah leadership, greater supportfor a Fatah-Hamas reconciliation and a Palestinian UN bid, concessions, moderationand a move toward non-violent demonstrations by Hamas and Fatah. And on the Israeliside, concessions sparked by unprecedented protests—straddling class and political divi-des—to decry economic worries.Tasked by the editors to assess how events related to the Arab Spring have affectedthe Israeli-Palestinian conflict (henceforth the ‘‘conflict’’) writ large, its violent manifesta-tion in particular, we put forth the following caveats. First, the Arab Spring is by nomeans monolithic in its effect on the conflict; within a single Arab state faced with immi-nent or realized regime change, any particular development may bode well for one partyto the conflict and be undesirable to another. The pooled effects therefore need to beassessed in each state, across the set of states experiencing upheaval, and for the variousparties to the conflict. Second, drawing a tie between external developments and internallevels of violence is not straightforward; at any given moment, distinct political actorsperpetrate violence for largely dissimilar reasons, whereas a single actor may engage inviolence for reasons that vary over time. A third qualification pertains to our writing inDecember, 2011—the proximity of our analysis to current events, our uncertainty as tohow these events will unfold, and the realization that outcomes associated with specificuprisings will vary, even markedly.With these caveats in mind, we analyze the available data for short-term changes in thesource, location, and scale of violence. To analyze potential longer-term effects, we present