Will there be one or two Palestines?

In its Week in Review section, the New York Times had an interesting article yesterday that explored the possibility that two Palestines might emerge as a result of the Hamas take-over of Gaza. As the Times writes:

For the first time in the history of the Palestinians’ fight for nationhood, there seemed a real possibility that two Palestines rather than one might emerge — one in Gaza, dominated by Hamas, the other in the West Bank, led by Fatah.

The Times provides some background on why this split may have happened:

They have always had distinct traits, culturally and geographically — the West Bank supporting a landlocked urban and agricultural society, Gaza facing the sea.

Those differences increased after the creation of Israel in 1948, when Gaza fell under the administration of Egypt and the West Bank was annexed by Jordan.

Egypt treated Gaza as a Palestinian enclave and encouraged a strong sense of Palestinian identity. Many Gazans who studied in Egypt during those years were influenced, in turn, by the Muslim Brotherhood, whose goal is to establish Islamic theocracies across the Arab world.

Back in Gaza, some of those men founded Hamas in 1987.

Jordan, on the other hand, suppressed Palestinian nationalism in favor of Jordanian identity and Palestinians in the West Bank were more influenced by the secular societies of Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, where many went to study. Others traveled even further abroad, bringing back a liberal view of the world.

During the 1990s, before the roads were closed, it was Gazans who generally had to travel to the West Bank in search of work, as opposed to the other way around. This was because in spite of Gaza's potential as a seaside resort town, it is the West Bank which has the more thriving economy as given that it is home to many Christian and Jewish holy sites, including Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Jericho, it has a well-established tourism industry.

As the Times continues, the economic hardships in Gaza forced many Palestinians in the territory to look to religion - and to Hamas for comfort.

Fatah recognized Hamas' increasing influence in Gaza, and of course tried to rein it in, even resorting to torturing, killing and humiliating its leaders in an effort to get Hamas under its control. Hamas was increasingly seen as the underdog champion of the Palestinians, as group that would suffer enormous costs to fight for their rights, and eventually it was Hamas who Palestinians voted in at the polls, not Fatah.

But as the Times goes, on, the Palestinians, like all publics, are fickle:

Hamas’s military victory last week obscures the fact that Fatah has been gaining political support in Gaza over the past year, according to Mouin Rabbani, an analyst at the International Crisis Group in Jordan. He says this may be because a larger percentage of Gazans depend on Fatah finances to make a living. Hamas, meanwhile, has been gaining support in the West Bank because Palestinians there are discouraged by Fatah’s corruption and policy failures, Mr. Rabbani says.

Moreover, as the Times continues, many ordinary Palestinians are by now disgusted with both parties, seeing their conflict as nothing more than an out-of-control family feud that portends to destroy any hope of an economically viable future.

This is the reality, the Times suggests, that may in the end, work to force some sort of reunification to occur:

Palestinians in both the West Bank and Gaza, meanwhile, recognize that Fatah alone holds the lifeline of Western financial support.

So if military dominance gives Hamas bargaining power, the economic imperative of a unified Palestinian body politic argues, in the end, for some accommodation with Fatah.