Once the touchstone for the Middle Eastern anti-colonial struggle, the issue of Palestine more and more is turning into one of purely local and material dimensions. This fact helps explain Palestinians' unwavering support for the peace process despite the fact that the ground rules are written by Israel and the U.S. PNS commentator Rami G. Khouri, former editor of The Jordan Times and a widely publicized author and commentator, lives and writes from Amman, Jordan.

AMMAN -- The Arab-Israeli conflict is passing through another of those moments that combine hope and despair. Intense diplomatic efforts to restart peace talks are a sign of hope, but this hope is deflated by the reality that the fuss is mostly about whether Israel's next move in the West Bank will involve at most 10 percent of the land (as Israel wants) or 13 percent (as the United States seems to suggest).

The matter is being negotiated essentially between the United States and Israel. Palestinian, Arab, European, United Nations and other international perspectives play no significant role.

The imbalance of power puts ever more pressure on the Palestinians to submit to Israeli dictates on land, security, settlements, and other basic issues. The Palestinians on their part exhibit a peculiar capacity to accept every new humiliation imposed by Israel. This strikes me as puzzling and worthy of analysis.

The Palestinian National Authority (PNA) headed by Yasser Arafat pleads for American "pressure" on Israel to withdraw from another 10-13 percent of the occupied West Bank. The Israeli government argues that anything more than 5-10 percent would endanger Israeli security, especially for Jewish settlers. The whole world -- except for the United States, Israel and Micronesia -- has just voted at the UN General Assembly for a resolution branding those Israeli settlements illegal.

Yet a strong majority of Palestinians still supports the Oslo peace process and support for Yasser Arafat's Fateh political group is also rising. 

How can we reconcile the continuing political marginalization of the PNA with the strong, even rising support for its peace policies among its own people? Only one answer makes any sense to me: the Palestinian issue is slowly but steadily becoming one of purely local and material dimensions -- shedding its traditional role as part of the Middle Eastern anti-colonial struggle that once spanned centuries and states.

Most Palestinians in Palestine support the Oslo process and Arafat's policies because those policies have brought small, incremental yet meaningful benefits to their everyday lives. And as more Palestinians work in the Israeli economy, the Palestinian support for Oslo and Arafat will increase commensurately.

Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza now put up with occasional petty humiliations that recall the worst of apartheid -- security zones, land confiscations, and travel and residence permits. Most Palestinians want the Oslo process to continue because these contacts decrease with every Israeli redeployment.

We are witnessing a merciless transition from Palestine as a cause to Palestine as a local vegetable and labor market. The Arab world is dominated by ideological criticism and personal ridicule of Arafat and the PNA, but within Palestine there is a narrow, pragmatic focus on simple material and emotional gain.

During the past half century, the majority of Palestinians have yearned for a relatively normal life, governed by their own people, working for the development of their own community. The critical element in this equation may be the novelty of hope among Palestinians living in the PNA-governed areas -- a sense that they can plan and work for their own future well-being, express their political and cultural identity in freedom, that they know where their children will grow up and go to school.

If this means getting a security pass from an Israeli office this is seen today as manageable price -- not permanently acceptable, but for the moment. The measure of success or failure for the Palestinians inside Palestine has changed. Some see this as a sign of maturity, others as a sign of defeat.

It is a combination of both, and it will continue -- because this is the only policy that has ever brought tangible gains in Palestine. As the lives of most Palestinians in Palestine improve, the credit for these gains translates into political support for the PNA, which increases its support by using its funds to hire tens of thousands of workers in its expanding bureaucracy.

So, despite the gross imbalance of power on the ground between Israelis and Arabs, the PNA will continue to negotiate under Israeli- and American-made ground rules.