When an angry Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas called Hamas officials "sons of dogs" on international television in mid-April, demanding they release the remaining Israeli hostages, he said that "all the Palestinian people are paying the price" for the October 7 attack organized by the Islamic rulers of Gaza and for the response by the Netanyahu government.
And while Israelis have just celebrated Independence Day, dating back to the 1947-48 war that is known by Palestinians as the Nakba, or catastrophe, it is worth noting that today, Palestinians are facing a similar type of "creeping economic Nakba."
Following the almost total demolition of Gaza in response to the brutal October 7 attack by Hamas and other Islamic radicals, the West Bank is now undergoing an unprecedented crushing of its social and economic structures. Palestinians are no longer allowed to work in Israel proper nor in settlements, and certain extremist settlers are running amok in villages, attacking vehicles and homes with families inside, chopping down olive trees and killing or injuring herds of sheep, while protected or ignored by IDF soldiers. This is creating a "new poor" status among Palestinians and forcing those who can to pack up and leave.
This is not the first time that Islamic radicals have brought a "catastrophe" to the Palestinian people. In his recent book "Palestine 1936" (soon to be published in Hebrew). American-Israeli historian Oren Kessler tells the story, perhaps for the first time for a general public, of the Great Arab Revolt of 1936-39, led by the "original" Palestinian radical Islamic strongman, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini.
"The Mufti pioneered the melding of Palestinian nationalism, Islamic fundamentalism, and then European Nazi antisemitism," Kessler explained to "Globes," "and set the model of total refusal in dealing with Zionist Jews and British Mandate officials."
Oren Kessler credit: Brett Kline
The Mufti boycotted the numerous commissions established by the British to find solutions to increasing violence in mandatory Palestine, including plans that would have favoured Palestinians by dramatically limiting Jewish immigration from Europe. He also named a radical preacher to head an important mosque in rapidly growing Haifa, who carried out numerous attacks against Jews and British targets, especially the oil pipeline running from Mosul, Iraq to Haifa.
A fanatically pro-Zionist, religious British officer, Orde Wingate, formed the Special Night Squads, affording military training to Jewish men by arguably the finest army in the world. Together they killed the charismatic preacher and his militia members, offering Palestinians their first religious martyr. His name? Ezzedine al-Qassam, a name brought back to life in the 1980s as the armed brigade of Hamas.
The Great Revolt of 1936-39 left more than 5,000 Palestinians dead, including those from Opposition families killed by the Mufti and his illegal armed militia forces. Their society was in ruins. Some 40,000 business, political and landed elite, including many Christian families from Bethlehem, left mandatory Palestine, with a good number settling in Central and South America. Today, for example, the President of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, an ally of Donald Trump, is the descendant of one of those Bethlehem families.
Kessler quotes Lebanese historian Gilbert Achcar on the consequences of the failures of the Revolt and the Mufti: "With the accumulation of defeats under Husseini’s disastrous leadership," writes Achcar of the mufti, "the only path still open to the Palestinians, if they were to avoid the catastrophe, the Nakba, was to shake off the political influence of this disreputable individual once and for all…This was not the path taken."
Palestinians could have avoided the Nakba and the entire war by getting rid of the Mufti, by agreeing to negotiate over the Partition Plan, "but instead they re-embraced him in 1947 and his model of total refusal, even after he had collaborated with Hitler and the Nazis," Kessler says.
The parallels between the radical Islam of the Great Revolt and the radical Islamic Hamas and its October 7 attack are indeed striking. "Hamas has repeated that total refusal, especially since October 7," he explains. "There is nothing left in Gaza and there is an ongoing economic disaster in the West Bank. Would I use the term ‘creeping Nakba’? That is your expression, not mine, but nothing is the same as before."
An example? Sitting at a café on Rabin Square in Tel Aviv in front of the construction site for the Light Rail, a project directed by a big Chinese state company, Kessler explains that before October 7 several hundred Palestinians were employed here on the site. Today, almost all the workers are Chinese.
Some activists here do not hesitate to use the word "catastrophe". "What Hamas did on October 7 led to a catastrophe in Gaza," says Nadav Tamir, director of the Israeli branch of J Street, an American Jewish group that opposes both the Netanyahu and Trump governments. "The attack was the highest level of radical Islam and its total refusal of the existence of Israel. And given the ongoing extremist settler activity in the West Bank with tacit government support, and the fact that tens of thousands of Palestinian workers can no longer enter Israel, Tamir states firmly, "For West Bank Palestinians, it is now the beginning of a Nakba."
OK, time to drive through the Gilo Tunnel just beyond Jerusalem, past checkpoint on Route 60 into the West Bank, past the churches and narrow history-filled streets of hilly Beit Jala, sprawling Bethlehem (entirely blocked from the view of passing drivers by a 20+ year old low, white Israeli-built wall), and in its old centre the Nativity Church and the heart of global Christianity, though in fact the local population has been perhaps 75% Muslim for years already. Bethlehem is visited yearly by hundreds of thousands pilgrims in normal times, who since October 7 are nowhere to be seen. We go past Al Khader village, and then the winding Patriarchs Way exit, past the huge, affluent Efrat settlement, and on to the busy, often tense and traffic-filled Gush Etzion roundabout and a big Rami Levi supermarket, and all the surrounding Israeli settlements and Palestinian villages and farmland.
This is the West Bank area where I have spent a great deal of time over the past 30 years, staying with dear friends first in the Dheishe refugee camp and now in a nearby village and archaeological wonderland, shopping with them in the Bethlehem market, sharing the joy and pain of births and deaths, doing homework with their teenage boys and walking with them in the hills behind their house, past the caves where incidentally Jewish rebel Bar Kochba hid from the Romans 2,000 years ago, just under the northern edge of the huge Efrat settlement, eating a huge meal of fish and meat and a mezze (a dozen or so small salad openers) with them in nearby affluent Batir village, Betar so long ago. Its tiny historic center is a UNESCO heritage site, where the Romans designed an irrigation system in biblical times that still functions. And by the way, in perhaps 120 CE those same Romans managed to kill the rebel Bar Kochba in historic Betar, where several stone wall ruins, known as "Khirbet Yehudi", or Jewish ruins, are visited by almost nobody. And I also spend time at Roots, a truly unique association in the West Bank.
The joint Israeli-Palestinian Roots Association (Shorashim in Hebrew, Judhur in Arabic) sits on a small piece of land, known informally as the "Ard", or "land" in Arabic, owned by the Abu Awwad family, just before the Gush roundabout. Local Israeli settler and Palestinian neighbours and sometimes activists, and on occasion their pre-teen children, have been gathering here for almost 10 years for work sessions and classes. A joint core group hosts visiting groups from Israel, the US, Europe and elsewhere, a strong source of income for Roots.
In his tiny office at the Ard, co-director Khaled Abu Awwad says he believes the local West Bank economy is dying. "This is indeed like a creeping nakba," he explains. "After destroying Gaza in reaction to the attack by the Hamas terrorists, this extremist government is now attacking all our resources here in the West Bank…our land, water, work, our very freedom. They want us to disappear, to leave. And with no work, parents cannot put food on the table."
For the record, Roots members can neither support Hamas or any radical Islamic group, nor this Israeli government. Israelis express their opposition easily, but most Palestinians do not, because living under rule by the Palestinian Authority or under an Israeli military structure (known oddly as the Civil Administration) they face consequences that residents of democracies normally do not have to deal with.
"And at the same time, we live in fear, hatred and anger," Khaled continues. "Some Palestinians have responded with terrorism, and this is wrong. But parents are afraid every time their kids go outside. They receive messages on Telegram: ‘jish houn,’ ‘soldiers are here,’ and order their kids back home, if possible."
As we drink coffee in her modest apartment, the ground floor of a family building in Ertas village next to Bethlehem, Hasnaa has just received that very message on her phone. A long-time hair stylist in Bethlehem, she has had no income since the October 7 attacks and the ensuing war, because many of her clients are not working either. Her husband, an interior designer, worked regularly with Israelis in nearby settlements. When the war began, that work ended abruptly. He now finds occasional one-off jobs with Palestinians that pay about 80 shekels a day (20-25 euros), which compares with 250-300 shekels daily with Israelis.
"We blame Hamas and this Israeli government for our terrible situation here in Bethlehem," Hasnaa says. "And no matter what you read in surveys, almost nobody here supports Hamas, but people are afraid of being hurt by Palestinian extremists if they express the truth."
When Hasnaa receives the "jish houn" message, she frantically calls her 16 year-old son walking to nearby Al Khader village along the road past the Solomon’s Pools biblical site, and tells him to return home. "I am afraid for my three sons every day," she says, "and our financial situation has never been so bad. Some days we eat very little, or nothing. Is this a nakba, a catastrophe? It feels that way because we don’t know if or when things will be better."
For Hanan Schlesinger, an ordained rabbi born in a New York suburb who has lived for decades in the Alon Shvut settlement in the Gush, the situation today is particularly ugly from a religious-political point of view.
"This current Israeli government is enacting a type of religiously-based Nakba to get rid of Palestinians," he says, "whereas in the 1940s there was no such religious ideology to transfer or get rid of them. Today, both sides are following rules and orders they believe come from God. But here at Roots, this is not our God."
Khaled Abu Awwad takes this line of thinking a step further. "Hamas leaders share something with Israeli ministers Ben Gvir and Smotrich," he says, struggling to maintain his composure. "They believe they are doing what God wants them to do. For me, this means that they believe that God is a dictator who loves death and blood. I am a religious man, but my image of God is very different. In fact, I believe that they have no relationship with God."
Noor Awad (no relation to Abu Awwad) was a hard-working tour guide in Bethlehem, one of the largest centres of Christian tourism in the world. Now, he is part of what he and others estimate at 70% of the local work force out of a job. "I understand the word Nakba," he comments in fluent American-accented English, "but I don’t like it, because it sounds like a normalized situation."
Awad chooses his words carefully, noting, "We do not live in a democracy here. The Palestinian Authority has been delegitimized. People here make fun of it for not taking any action to better things. They feel helpless and are living in fear about the uncertainty of what comes next."
Over coffee at Roots while preparing to receive a group of American visitors, co-director Shaul Judelman notes that the fear is mutual. "Almost 200,000 Palestinians came to work every day in Israel before October 7, and now almost nobody wants them back, especially here in the West Bank," he says. "Occasional attacks were accepted in a sense, but now since October 7 Israelis here live in fear of being attacked and killed, not by terrorists in uniform, but by ordinary-looking guys on the street. Here at Roots, our mission has become increasingly difficult. A major casualty of the October 7 attacks and the war has been trust. And we know that if Palestinians cannot work, we must ask, what comes next, for them and for us?"
There is at least one exception in the area. In normal times, in the big Rami Levi supermarket at the Gush roundabout on Route 60, managers are both Palestinian and Israeli, meat and cheese counter employees, and product stock people, are almost all Palestinians, and customers shop side by side, in most cases effortlessly ignoring each other.
Initially, after the October 7 attacks, no Palestinians were allowed back in the store, workers or shoppers. Today, shoppers are still not allowed back, but the employees are there in almost full force, according to one manager, who preferred to remain anonymous. Security checks were done on both Palestinian Christian and Muslim employees, many of whom have in any case been there for years.
"I feel safer with no Palestinian shoppers," says Barak, from Alon Shvut. "With the workers, there are no problems. We know them, and they know us."
Conversations flow in Arabic between employees stocking shelves in busy aisles, who then change smoothly into Hebrew with shoppers. It all feels almost normal. At his counter, Issic is busy cutting a piece of sheep’s cheese. "I’m working, thank God," he says. "In Bethlehem, so many people are living off savings. Many stores are empty. The situation is the worst ever."
Is this the beginning of a Nakba?
He shrugs and comments, "This is not like Gaza, thank God. There they have nothing left. But who knows what can happen down the road here?"
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on May 11, 2025.
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd., 2025.