New Solidarity Among Palestinians Creates Fresh Challenge for Israel - Long dispersed and facing differing issues, Palestinians find

“The mere fact that somebody is able to stand up to Israel without being crushed is something new because the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict is the history of defeats,” said Ghassan Khatib, a Palestinian pollster who teaches at Birzeit University in the West Bank and isn’t a Hamas supporter. [...] In the wake of the fighting, the Palestinian Authority is struggling to retain what remains of its backing, torn between the revolutionary mood on the streets and the need to maintain day-to-day coordination with Israel, which controls networks of settlements, roads and checkpoints throughout the West Bank. [...] “This is an uprising against the fact that in the 28 years since the Oslo agreement, the negotiations have led to nothing,” said Mr. [...] On one end of the spectrum are those, backed by some on the Israeli left, who envision a binational state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea where everyone, Arab and Jew, has the same rights. [...] Then came the deaths, the setbacks and the realization that the only solution was a negotiated one.