Spirit of solidarity sidelines Palestinian split

By Wafa Amr

RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) - Israel's offensive on Gaza appears to be creating a mood of unity on the streets of the West Bank that the leaders of hostile Palestinian factions have been unable to obtain in months of negotiation.

It is not the formal entente they say they are searching for, but it is a grassroots solidarity of suffering that some feel exposes how artificial is the split in Palestinian ranks at the level of the political leadership.

On Tuesday, angry Palestinians in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah protested, chanting: "Today Gaza is under fire, tomorrow it will be the West Bank."

Slogans called for an end to the schism between President Mahmoud Abbas' secular Fatah faction and Islamist rival Hamas, winner of a 2006 parliamentary election. Since fighting in 2007, the two now control the West Bank and Gaza Strip respectively.

Abbas and his allies are ready to negotiate peace with Israel after 60 years in return for an end to occupation and an Arab state that would live side by side with the Jewish state, in mutual security.

Hamas has refused to recognize Israel's right to exist and its leaders call on all to join their resistance platform.

Some analysts say Israel is content to have Palestinians divided, and doubt that there would be serious progress toward a peace deal with them if Islamist hardliners were brought back into the fold.

Non-stop television pictures of charred corpses and children's body parts plucked from the smoking rubble of bombed buildings are shocking West Bank Palestinians.

Israel's 11-day offensive has killed 600 of their people, including many civilians. And it has sidelined the once all-engrossing Fatah-Hamas schism, for the time being at least.

Some blame Hamas for allowing the situation to reach such a destructive state, but others praise Hamas fighters for their courage in confronting Israeli troops.

"People in the West Bank sympathize with the civilians in Gaza who get killed, not with Hamas," said Lama Hourani of Ramallah.

"People here are aware that Israel's aim is not to destroy Hamas but to destroy the will of the Palestinian people everywhere. That is why people here call for unity."

A shopkeeper in Qalqilya had a different view.

"Hamas has succeeded in winning the people's support during this war," Fathi Abdel-Al said. Hamas was winning the peoples' hearts for resisting Israel's military might.

Some Palestinians, however, recalled the widespread destruction of West Bank cities during the Israeli invasion of 2002, when the late Yasser Arafat came under siege in his Ramallah compound. They fear it could happen again.