West Bank Patience with Abbas frays in Ramallah

Small shards of broken glass glinted in between paving stones in central Ramallah, one of the few physical signs of a clash the previous night between protesters and the security forces of the ruling Palestinian Authority.

- Ruth Michaelson, Sufian Taha

Mohammed Tarifi sat with a friend on the corner of a deserted street whose cafes and juice shops would normally be thronged with crowds. The two stared up at an enormous billboard for Sprite, a sign of how Ramallah has grown in recent years and achieved limited prosperity as the economic and political centre of the West Bank.

"I wasn't at the demonstration, but I saw it on TikTok - Ramallah was a war zone," he said. As protesters chanted to demand the fall of the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, throwing rocks at police cars near Ramallah's central Al Manara square, security forces responded with smoke bombs.

"I blame the Palestinian Authority. They should have just allowed the demonstration to happen rather than stopping it. We should support our people in Gaza, and I'm just so angry at what's happened," said the 20-year-old.