Can the Palestinian Authority be beefed up?

The twopapapa parts of the Palestinian territories that Israel has occupied since 1967 are just 40km apart at their closest point. Yet the devastation of Gaza can feel farther from the West Bank than it does from many capitals in Europe. The West Bank, the bigger chunk of the Palestinians’ hoped-for independent state, has witnessed few big protests. Whereas people have boycotted American goods elsewhere in the Arab world, Palestinian officials serve Coca Cola. Few people in cafés watch the continuous coverage of the Gaza war on Al Jazeera, the Qatari channel. Couples laugh over cards and backgammon. “They come here to lose themselves,” says a Hamas fighter-turned-barista in a rooftop café in Nablus, one of the West Bank’s biggest cities.Overseeing this calm—if not responsible for it—is the Palestinian Authority (). Persistent conflict with Israel has taught West Bankers the cost of violence. Gaza under Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist movement, has seen six wars with Israel since 2007; the West Bank has largely shied away from large-scale confrontations. For decades Mahmoud Abbas, the ’s president, has favoured negotiations to liberate Palestine, rejecting violent resistance. Western and Arab governments now pin their hopes for Gaza’s future on him and the .