How the Palestinian diaspora is reacting to unrest in the West Bank
As Palestinians in the diaspora watch helplessly the current uprising in the Palestinian territories, they seek nonviolent ways to gather support to their cause.
CAIRO — Although the roots of the latest unrest in Israel and Palestine remain disputed — an arson attack by settlers against the Dawabshe family, purported Palestinian hatred and anti-Semitism, or decades of Israeli occupation — since September, headlines from Jerusalem have dominated the international news cycle.
Although those stories have since been relegated to the back pages, chiefly by the Islamic State’s (IS) Nov. 13 attacks on Paris and the ongoing bloodshed and negotiations surrounding the Syrian conflict, Palestinians are still navigating their way through the unrest.
A poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey (PCS) conducted Sept. 17-19 found that, in the absence of a viable peace process, 57% of Palestinians surveyed supported a return to an armed intifada. At the same time, 42% believed that armed action would be the “most effective means to establish a Palestinian state alongside the State of Israel,” and 29% “believed in the efficacy of negotiations.”
At the same time, few such polls exist for the estimated 5 million officially recognized descendants of Palestinian refugees in the Middle East eligible for assistance by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) in the Near East, or the estimated 11 million total in the global diaspora.
