Gazans Long for Return of Israel

Recently, a few Palestinian columnists have broken a political taboo by referring to the Israeli occupation as perhaps preferable to the current chaos.

For example, Majed Azzam wrote in the Hamas-affiliated weekly Al Risala in Gaza that Palestinians ?should have the courage to acknowledge the truth,? that the only thing that ?prevents the chaos and turmoil in Gaza from spreading to the West Bank is the presence of the Israeli occupation.?

Another Palestinian writer, Bassem al-Nabris, a poet from Khan Yunis, in the Gaza Strip, wrote in the Arabic electronic newspaper Elaph that if there was a referendum in the Gaza Strip on the question of whether people would like the Israeli occupation to return, ?half the population would vote ?yes.? But in practice,? he continued, ?I believe that the number of those in favor is at least 70 percent, if not more.?

?If the occupation returns,? Mr. Nabris added, ?at least there will be no civil war, and the occupier will have a moral and legal obligation to provide the occupied people with employment and food, which they now lack.?

Frequent internal fighting and lawlessness gripping the Palestinian territories have transformed the militants into no more than gangsters in the eyes of many of those who once saw them as heroes. "Many of these groups are now a burden on society," said legislator Nasser Jum'a, once a leading member of Fatah's al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades. Jum'a said ordinary Palestinians were so fed up with the armed groups "they now wish the Israeli occupation would take over in Gaza or hope for the return of Jordanian rule in the West Bank" to get rid of them.

In one recent incident in the West Bank city of Nablus, gunmen told shopkeepers to close their businesses as a sign of solidarity with a Fatah leader arrested the day before in an Israeli raid. For the first time, most of the shop owners refused to close down.

Many of my foreign colleagues have tended to ignore the voice of the man in the street, but it is not enough to interview this or that official. To understand what the Palestinians are really thinking, you need to sit in the cafes. There were days when I would go to Nablus, for example, and I would hear Palestinians telling me, "You know what? We really hope the Jews will come back and reoccupy Nablus. It's not because we love Israel, but because we're fed-up with the Palestinian Authority and Palestinian corruption."

Palestinians in Jerusalem, by deed if not by declaration, are increasingly opting for life under Israeli sovereignty. Jerusalem is by no means happily unified, but it is becoming grudgingly unified. "It's not that the Palestinians here have become Zionists; it's not that they've fallen in love with the State of Israel," says an Arab attorney in Jerusalem. "They just want to live normal lives, with security, with a little money in their wallets. They want their kids to be able to go to school. They want what everybody wants."

Many local Arabs are coming to terms with Israeli sovereignty. They are reporting crimes to Israeli police in greater numbers. There is also a big shift in the schools away from the PA-approved curriculum to the one approved by Israel - at the insistence of Jerusalem Arab parents. Only 15% of Jerusalem's Arabs voted in last year's PA elections - compared with a 78% turnout in the territories, notes Hillel Cohen of the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies. Except for aging members of the PLO, the locals no longer clamor publicly for al-Quds - the Arabic name for Jerusalem - to be recognized as the Palestinian capital. Notes the local attorney: "The saying you hear [from Arabs] in the city now is 'Give me hell in Jerusalem over paradise in the PA.'"