Palestinians want to get together

A BUS bombing on the Jewish side of Jerusalem on March 23rd, which killed one person and injured scores more, was the first such attack for six-and-a-half years. As The Economist went to press, no group had claimed responsibility. But the event followed a sudden sharp increase in the firing of rockets into Israel from Gaza, the Palestinian coastal strip run by Hamas, the Islamist movement that refuses to recognise Israel. On March 19th, in 15 minutes, Hamas and its Gazan cohorts fired 50 mortars into Israel, more than a third of the total for the past two years. Hamas may also have relaxed its efforts to bridle other groups: Islamic Jihad recently fired several Grad rockets at two Israeli ports and at Beersheba, 40km (25 miles) away.

Presuming Gazans to be responsible for the bus bomb, Israel hit back, blacking out their territory with an aerial attack on an electricity power station. A more punishing round of violence between Israel and Palestine may be in the offing.

One reason for this is that Hamas is facing growing discontent among its own people in Gaza, where a new generation of computer-connected people, especially students and lawyers, has been venturing onto the streets to protest against the behaviour of the rulers. Many Gazans, having elected an Islamist government five years ago, now want to unseat it.

Since 2007 the Palestinian territories have been divided between Hamas in Gaza and Fatah, the Palestinians' oldest nationalist movement, headed by Mahmoud Abbas, in the West Bank. Too busy vying with each other to confront Israel, which occupies most of their land, they have sought to consolidate their holds on their respective domains by scrapping parliament and ruling by decree.

Not everyone has taken kindly to this new authoritarian yoke. Inspired by protests against other despots, Palestinians in both territories have been crying for “revolution until we end the division”. In Gaza and the West Bank protesters champ for an interim government of the young, aligned to no party, to be followed by elections in both bits of Palestine.

Under the watchful eye of his Western patrons, Mr Abbas's security forces have generally stopped beating up protesters and have let them erect tents in the West Bank's main towns. Hamas has shown less tolerance, fearful lest a turnout of thousands, including many women and a few rappers, posed a secular challenge. “Hamas is worse than Mubarak, because it governs in the name of God, not the people,” says Ayman Shaheen, a professor at Azhar University, Gaza's last remaining college outside the movement's control.

At first, Hamas relied on its own considerable popular base. On March 15th it swamped a non-party rally with green flags, its chosen colour. But this show of unity was short-lived. Facing a barrage of stones, the protesters fled to a neighbouring square, only to be mauled by a mob wielding knives, clubs and chairs. Their tents were burned down and the square cleared within minutes. Female students claim they were groped by bearded bully-boys rummaging for mobile phones with video footage of the beatings.

Hamas's recourse to the brutality it had decried in opposition smacked of a loss of confidence. For the next few days, thugs in riot-gear thumped students trying to reassemble and ransacked foreign news bureaus, clubbing reporters and smashing their gear. Hamas's Internal Security Intelligence service hauled hundreds to its headquarters. Some were stripped of their computers and phones, others were beaten with electric rods and hooded in foul-smelling bags. Mr Shaheen said he was blindfolded and repeatedly smacked about the head.

Even so, Hamas was frustrated in its efforts to quell the protests, which were generated more by an informal network of like-minded people than by a movement with a leader. The violence kept people off the streets. Businessmen shied away from helping the protesters. Wedding organisers refused to lend them loudspeakers. But a few hundred protesters continued to wait outside the International Committee of the Red Cross, the UN, and the home of Gaza's prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, at the risk of being thumped with batons.

The protests may have prompted Hamas to unleash its mortar barrage at Israel, to deflect attention from its own woes. “It doesn't normally respond with dozens of projectiles when Israel kills two men,” says Mkhaimar Abu Sada, a professor at Azhar University and friend of Mr Shaheen, referring to an Israeli raid on a training camp in Gaza the day before.

Three days later, Israel struck back, killing nine Gazans, four of them civilians playing football, and threatened another war. So Hamas was able to remind Gazans who their real enemy was. Fearful of being dubbed collaborators, the protesters have called off rallies until the end of the month.

Emboldened by Hosni Mubarak's fall in Egypt, Hamas is counting on his successors to open Egypt's border with Gaza, to reduce dependence on Israel and Mr Abbas, who together control Gaza's overland trade. Whereas Mr Haniyeh has invited Mr Abbas to Gaza, to mollify the protesters and show willing to seek reconciliation, his military wing displays scant interest in sharing power. At least in the short run, expect violence, across the board, to rise.