West Bank, Gaza almost strangers

RAMALLAH, West Bank — Think of it as the Palestinian version of America's red-state, blue-state divide.

The split that has emerged in the last two weeks between the Fatah-controlled West Bank and the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip comes as a surprise to much of the world.

But for many Palestinians, Hamas' violent takeover of Gaza just formalizes a division between the two communities that has existed for decades.

"Look at any economic indicator, and you will see significant differences between Gaza and the West Bank," said Ghassan Khatib, a former Palestinian government minister, now vice president of Birzeit University in the West Bank.

"The two sides don't even know each other anymore."

Years of separation

The two communities, on divergent evolutionary paths since Israel's creation in 1948 cut them off from each other, have had only limited contact in recent years.

Israeli travel restrictions between the two, which are separated by a 30-mile stretch of Israeli desert, mean it is easier for someone from Gaza to get to London than to travel what should be less than an hour's drive to the West Bank.

There are no students from Gaza in the West Bank's Birzeit University, and no students from the West Bank in Gaza's Islamic University.

The two communities can't do business together, and only with great difficulty can they marry. Aspiring doctors in Gaza can't get to the only Palestinian medical school in the West Bank.

Employees of the various Palestinian Authority government departments must host conferences in other countries if they want employees from both territories to participate.

The travel restrictions have helped create two very different Palestinian communities, which share the same goal of a unified Palestinian state as much as they share mutual suspicion.

The 1.5 million residents of the Gaza Strip are younger, poorer and less educated than the 2.5 million residents of the West Bank. The majority still live in rudimentary refugee camp housing.

"Gaza is backward-looking by necessity," said Ali Jirbawi, a political scientist at Birzeit University. "The people are refugees and poor."

Too different?

The West Bank has developed a more robust economy. It has a middle class and a wealthy expatriate community with enough money to send its children to the growing number of private schools and on trips abroad.

Only one-quarter of the population are refugees, and most have long since moved out of refugee camps.

Palestinian sociologist and pollster Khalil Shikaki found a "a psychological barrier between the inhabitants of the two territories."

In his 1994 study — conducted shortly after the Israelis stopped allowing free movement between the two territories — Shikaki found that West Bank residents thought Gaza was "nothing but a big refugee camp."

West Bankers maintained that Gazans were "inclined to roughness, extremism, grimness, fanaticism and instability."

Such divisions have led many Israeli commentators to predict a permanent split.

In an article just released, Jacob Savag, a graduate fellow at the Shalem Center, a Jerusalem research institute, argued "to a large extent, the residents of Gaza and the West Bank are two different people, and the idea of a three-state solution — Israel, plus a Hamas-run Gaza and a Fatah-governed West Bank — makes historical sense."

But in Palestinian circles, serious talk of a permanent separation is anathema.

Even acknowledging the years of separation, and all the changes and distance wrought, is difficult for many. It contradicts the Palestinian mantra passed down through the generations.

"Our slogan," explained Radwan Maadi, a 22-year-old selling T-shirts from a cart on the streets of Ramallah, "is national unity between Gaza and the West Bank, Fatah and Hamas, Christian and Muslim."

To say otherwise, many Palestinians worry, is to justify the Israeli occupation and serve Israeli interests of having small, weak neighbors.

"The consequences would be catastrophic for the Gaza Strip," said Professor Nagi Shurrabi, a political scientist with Gaza's Al Azhar University. "This is not a viable state."

Meanwhile, many West Bank residents, Maadi included, remain worried that the violence in Gaza could spread to the West Bank.

A survey released by Ramallah-based Near East Consulting found that 70 percent of respondents in both territories think the current crisis will "explode out of control."

"It is a tragedy," said Rami Natur, a Ramallah ice-cream vendor. "Once glass is shattered, you can't put it back together. This time, if the glass is shattered, it will be by our own hands."