Amid swirl of violence, Palestinians wonder: Where are their leaders?

Irrelevant and despised, feared but ineffective. Across the West Bank, Palestinians say a repressive Palestinian Authority is failing to protect citizens’ rights and leaving them to fend for themselves in the face of rising violence that many fear is threatening to spin out of control.

“The Authority is so out of touch with what is going on on the ground, it would be laughable if people weren’t dying,” says Mariam, a university student in Ramallah.

Seeing their hold on power slip, and seeking to quash any initiative that may challenge their rule, the increasingly autocratic Palestinian Authority (PA) and its aging, long-serving president, Mahmoud Abbas, are restricting the few liberties Palestinians have enjoyed: speech, political activity, civil society, and art.

That leaves Palestinians in the West Bank in a quandary: They are burdened with an unrepresentative government they see as nonfunctional, yet