Ramallah Peace Protest

While wandering through Ramallah this morning, I unexpectedly encountered this Palestinian peace protest. There were about a hundred people there, blocking traffic at the city center while calling for an end to the violence in the Gaza Strip. The chants all had random unknown words so that I can't actually translate them, but they were all calls for unity, calls for Abbas and Haniyeh to end the fighting, and that sort of thing.

Hamas is so far winning the war for control of Gaza, and people are clearly afraid clashes will spread to the West Bank. There doesn't seem to be any hope of an effective truce, however. Abbas and Haniyeh have both called for restraint in Gaza to no avail, suggesting the belief of many academics that the Gaza fighting is actually over local issues with only a veneer of Fatah and Hamas loyalties could be accurate.

(Crossposted to American Footprints)