For Israelis and Palestinians, Separate Struggles in a Shared Space

On a Saturday afternoon in late November, I took a walk through Ramallah, the de facto administrative capital of the West Bank. The streets were calm, and there was no visible security presence outside of a few Palestinian security guards chatting casually with a group of men near one of the city's heavily trafficked roundabouts. Less than two weeks later, it was a very different picture in Ramallah. Clashes had broken out between Israeli security forces and Palestinians in the city following U.S. President Donald Trump's Dec. 6 announcement that the United States would recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and move its embassy there. The U.S. decision and accompanying protests and violence shows once again that a move made by an external power has a very real, concrete impact on the ground in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It serves as a reminder that the fate of the Palestinians, and to a...