While the Gaza Strip burns, the occupied West Bank is smouldering, with violent clashes between Palestinians and Israeli forces raising the spectre of a new popular uprising after years of relative calm.
In just a three-day period late last week, 10 Palestinians died and some 600 wounded during a spate of angry protests against the prolonged military offensive in nearby Gaza.
Yesterday, Israeli police said they foiled a potentially deadly attack when they stopped a car laden with explosives as its driver tried to reach Israel via a West Bank checkpoint, while riots broke out once more overnight in East Jerusalem.
In normal times, such friction would be dominating local headlines, but with all eyes fixed instead on Gaza, where more than 1,050 Palestinians have died so far in 20 days of fighting, the growing tension has been largely overlooked.
If the Gaza bloodshed continues for much longer, Palestinians say, it might prove impossible for Israel or Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to keep the lid on growing rage in the West Bank.
“It’s premature to describe what’s happening as an uprising, [however] the Palestinians have overcome their fear and are pushing towards the Israeli checkpoints,” said Hani al-Masri, a political analyst in Ramallah, the de-facto Palestinian capital which lies just to the north of Jerusalem.
More than 10,000 Palestinians marched on the Qalandia checkpoint outside Ramallah on Thursday night, the largest such rally in years, with whole families joining the demonstration.
To Jerusalem we go, martyrs in the millions!
“To Jerusalem we go, martyrs in the millions!” the crowds chanted. “Our souls and our blood we sacrifice for you, Gaza!”
In the ensuing confrontations, youths hurled stones and aimed screeching fireworks at Israeli soldiers, who shot back with rubber and live bullets, killing a 17-year old and injuring dozens, said Palestinian medics who treated the wounded.
Israel captured East Jerusalem, Gaza and the West Bank in a 1967 war. It has annexed East Jerusalem, pulled its settlers and soldiers from Gaza in 2005 and offered limited self rule to Palestinians in the West Bank while rapidly expanding its network of Jewish settlements in the kidney-shaped territory.
Palestinians want an independent state in Gaza and the West Bank, with East Jerusalem as their capital.
Repeated US-led negotiations over the past 20 years have failed to broker a permanent deal. The most recent round of direct talks collapsed in April, with Palestinians livid over more settlement building and Israelis furious that Abbas had signed a unity pact with the Hamas Islamists in Gaza.
In June, following the murder of three Jewish teenagers, Israeli forces arrested hundreds of people across the territory in its search for suspects. Israel blamed Hamas but the group neither denied nor acknowledged responsibility for the killings.