During protests in the West Bank on Monday, Palestinians adapted a protest anthem made popular by their neighbors in Syria last year to call for their president and prime minister to step down.
The original song, âYalla Erhal Ya Bashar,â or âCome on Bashar, Leave,â calling for the departure President Bashar al-Assad, was written last year in Syria. At a protest in the West Bank on Monday, protesters changed the words of the tune, to target President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.
As Yousef Munayyer, the director of The Palestine Center in Washington, observed on Twitter, the borrowing completed a circle in a way.
Palestinians have long taught other Arabs art of protest. W/ adaptation of #Syria protest chant, we've come full circle http://t.co/ziWUFEd0
- Yousef Munayyer (@YousefMunayyer) 10 Sep 12
Another striking image of the day's protests in Hebron was the demonstrators hurling their shoes at a large banner of the Palestinian Authority's prime minister.
As Reuters reports, the protesters were frustrated at the Palestinian Authority's management of the economy in the parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank it administers. In the evening, there were clashes between the Palestinian Authority's security forces and demonstrators in Hebron, Bethlehem and Nablus.
The Israeli-American journalist Joseph Dana, who is based in Ramallah, noted that video of the security forces hurling rocks at protesters looked quite a bit like images from Egypt recorded last year.
While I watching this video from Nablus-shot earlier tonight-my flatmate asked why I was watching old videos from Egypt http://t.co/Uvtr4WkL
- joseph dana (@ibnezra) 10 Sep 12