The principal Palestinian city on the West Bank is Ramallah, about ten miles north of Jerusalem. My parents and I spent the summer of l942 there. I recall it as a leafy, slow-paced and prosperous town of free-standing villas, largely Christian in population, served by a well-known Friends High School. Today it is the West Bank capital of the Palestinian Authority set up under Yasser Arafat as a direct result of the Israeli-PLO negotiations. Most of its Christian residents have been replaced by Muslims; it has considerably increased in size and is now full of office buildings, shops, restaurants, schools, institutes and taxis, all catering to 'al-Dafah', or 'the Bank' as it is known. But there are only a tiny number of hotels in Ramallah, nor is it any longer a resort. While I was there during the second half of March Mr Arafat's office in Gaza announced that the West Bank was to be renamed the Northern District. No one I spoke to understood what that particular change signified. But it is true that more than most places, and despite their long history, the Palestinian territories seem to spawn new names, jargons, initials and shorthands. They are a feature of the unstable circumstances in which Palestinians now live.

LRB 5 September 1996 | PDF Download