Ramallah a bubble of calm for Palestinians

updated 1:36 p.m. ET July 9, 2007

RAMALLAH, West Bank - Mohammed Kilani, a computer technician, hits the gym every other day to swim laps and lift weights. Umm Hussein, whose husband sells BMWs, takes her kids to the mall to shop, eat in the food court and play video games.

Despite the crippling poverty and frequent violence in the Palestinian territories, the city of Ramallah, the unofficial capital of the West Bank, holds out as an island of middle class existence.

The Islamic militant Hamas is largely absent from this city of 57,000, meaning that Ramallah could provide the best glimpse of what a Palestinian state could look like without Israeli occupation, with its trade and travel bans — if moderate President Mahmoud Abbas’ secular agenda prevails.

While armed militias rule the streets of Nablus, and Gazans largely survive on U.N. food handouts, residents of Ramallah take yoga and Salsa dance classes or sip cappuccinos and beer in mixed groups — behavior that could get them killed 10 miles away.

But even in bourgeois Ramallah, Israel’s military occupation is always near — drivers have to pass army checkpoints to get in and out of town, and troops occasionally raid the city to snatch wanted militants.

“We’re under occupation,” said Sam Bahour, a Palestinian-American business consultant in Ramallah. “It’s just a five-star occupation.”

The area also contains four refugee camps, strongholds of Palestinian gunmen who sometimes intimidate residents. Still, their presence pales in comparison to other West Bank cities.

Many feel more optimistic about the future now that the Hamas-led government has been replaced by a Cabinet of moderates, at least in the West Bank. Abbas replaced a Hamas-Fatah coalition last month with a new government of economists and professors after Hamas violently took over the Gaza Strip.

Blow to devastated Palestinian economy
Last week, the West Bank-based government paid full salaries to tens of thousands of civil servants for the first time in more than a year, after Israel and the international community resumed the flow of aid and tax revenues, which had been frozen after Hamas won a 2006 election.

The boycott dealt a harsh blow to the Palestinian economy, already devastated by years of fighting with Israel. Yet the hardships were never felt as keenly in Ramallah, which became the de facto capital of the West Bank after the establishment of the Palestinian autonomy government there in the mid-1990s under interim peace deals with Israel.

Over the years, business people and international organizations moved to Ramallah, bringing their offices, staff and salaries with them. In the summer, hundreds of Palestinian-Americans vacation in the city, spending dollars and introducing new customs, such as working out at the gym.

In the weight room at Tri Fitness, the city’s swankiest health club, Kilani, 25, took a break from lifting weights to compare Ramallah to his hometown, Jenin, which is next to one of the West Bank’s most militant refugee camps.

In Jenin, coffee shops are only for men, unlike in Ramallah, he said over the crooning of Arab pop singers from the TV sets on the walls. Fewer women in Ramallah wear veils than elsewhere in the West Bank, he added.

However, what keeps him in Ramallah is his career. “Where are the opportunities for IT in Jenin?” he asked. “They’re all here.”

Across the room, Katherine Halteh, 16, was working her abs. Unlike most Palestinians, Halteh said she has permission to travel to Jerusalem, because her mother is an Israeli Arab. Still, she prefers Ramallah.

Jerusalem, claimed by Israelis and Palestinians as a capital, is controlled by Israel and lies just six miles to the south.

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