RAMALLAH, West Bank — Jugglers and stilt walkers led the procession one recent evening from Manara Square to City Hall here in street theater meant to recall the first Palestinian intifada.

Back then, in the late 1980s, there was no Palestinian Authority, the Israeli military occupation of the West Bank was ubiquitous, and the Palestinians closed their movie theaters out of respect for the hundreds killed in clashes with Israeli soldiers.

In the 2014 version, part of a Palestinian arts festival held every two years, parkour acrobats leapt across the urban landscape as Palestinian Authority police officers stopped the traffic and two youths masked in black-and-white kaffiyehs surreptitiously distributed reprints of a 1988 leaflet with instructions for “the popular masses” from the underground intifada leadership.

But things took a bizarre turn when a plainclothes Palestinian security officer tried to arrest the two youths because the permit for the procession apparently did not extend to masks and leaflets.