The Palestinian Authority also does not generally encourage direct confrontation with Israel. Its security coordination with Israel, a pillar of the Oslo peace accords of the 1990s, not only helps prevent attacks against Israel but also helps the authority suppress its militant Islamic rivals.
“It’s very hard to have a culture of resistance if, from the very top, the entire system and leadership is premised on cooperation with the military,” said Nathan Thrall, who leads the International Crisis Group’s Israeli-Palestinian project.
West Bank Palestinians also look at Gaza, where the past year of protests along the boundary fence have taken an enormous toll, with scores killed by Israeli forces but have done little to improve conditions.
Increasingly, Mr. Thrall said, “West Bankers are aspiring to middle-class life with mortgages and car payments.”
Few see the point in risking their stability, however tenuous, for an abstract goal. Many have taken bank loans to marry, or to buy homes or cars, and in the West Bank a default or bad check can land one in prison.
“People have started talking more about their economic situation than resistance,” said Muhammad Abu Latifa, a resident of the Kalandia refugee camp who spent seven years in jail after he and two friends stabbed an Israeli civilian in a Jerusalem suburb when he was 17.
Now 26 and a student of political science and international relations at Birzeit, Mr. Abu Latifa said he was glad his Israeli victim survived the attack. He criticized the Palestinian Authority for its involvement in monopolies that he said kept prices rising in the West Bank and for nepotism, saying the good public service jobs went to people with connections.
Those problems, he said, along with the unpopular security cooperation, make many youths feel like “they have to confront the Palestinian Authority before the Israelis.”
The change in atmosphere is tangible, with tension and violence subsumed by relative calm and consumerism.