Ramallah a bubble of calm for Palestinians

Harsh contrast
“The Arabs in Jerusalem don’t do stuff like this,” she said, gesturing at the workout machines. “If they want to, they have to go to Israeli places.”

Ramallah’s rise has coincided with the decline of other West Bank cities like Nablus, the West Bank’s second largest, where armed militias roam the streets.

Hakim Sabbah, 30, said Nablus had three movie theaters when he was a child. Sabbah, who works for a local aid group, Project Hope, said he once acted in a theater group that performed in the streets of Nablus’ old city. “That’s something we don’t do any more,” he said.

The cinemas closed during the first Palestinian uprising in the late 1980s, and continuous street violence has prompted many businesses to relocate to Ramallah or neighboring Jordan, leading to greater unemployment.

Sabbah’s organization recently canceled a youth talent show after the Israeli army invaded the city and imposed a curfew in a hunt for militants, Sabbah said. Security concerns caused the French Cultural Center to cancel all three concerts planned in the city as part of a recent music festival.

A more Western feel
Such worries feel distant from Ramallah’s handful of Western-style coffee shops and bars, where English slang peppers Arabic conversations, men and women chat openly, beer is served despite an Islamic prohibition on alcohol and foreign passports abound. In neighboring villages, such behavior risks a violent reaction from conservative Muslims. In Hamas-controlled Gaza, it would be out of the question.

“I love Ramallah because you have these kinds of places that break gender stereotypes,” said Saleh Hijazi, 24, sharing a table at the Pronto Resto Cafe with four other Palestinian twenty-somethings, all U.S.-educated.

“But I also feel that the place is very elitist,” he added. “You can say that about Ramallah in general.”

Hijazi sipped his beer and lit another Gauloise Blonde cigarette while the girl next to him discussed film theory with a guy in dreadlocks.

“You feel like you’re living in a bubble inside of the West Bank,” Hijazi continued, adding that he recently read a news report about 13 deaths in Gaza.

“I care about what’s happening there,” he said, “but physically and psychologically, it feels very far away.”

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