JERUSALEM—Tensions between Israelis and Palestinians remain high after a fourth war with Hamas ended in a shaky cease-fire in May, and home demolitions and evictions of Palestinians, supported by the Israeli government, continue in both East Jerusalem and the West Bank. But Palestinians—and even Israelis—say that the Palestinian cause has been galvanized like never before, and disparate groups of Palestinians are discovering a new sense of unity in the rubble of the 11-day war.
Since the creation of the State of Israel in 1948, Palestinians have lived physically divided. In the Gaza Strip, a blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt in 2007 means that most of its people have never left the small enclave and have had vanishingly few contacts with fellow Palestinians in the West Bank or East Jerusalem. That isolation was further deepened by decades of illegal occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
