V. A. KOROCHKINA Saint Petersburg State University "Arab spring" Keywords:. Palestinian Authority, Middle East, Israel, "Palestinian spring" The authorities of the Palestinian National Authority (PA) have twice announced the beginning of the "Palestinian spring". The first time was in September 2011, when Mahmoud Abbas, the head of the Palestinian Authority, submitted an application to the UN for Palestine's admission to membership in the organization.1 The second time was a year later, when discontent caused by higher prices and lower living standards resulted in protests in Hebron, Bethlehem, Nablus and Ramallah. Then rioters threw stones at a portrait of Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and called for the resignation of Abbas himself, who blamed Israel for the crisis.2 During the two years of the Arab Spring, popular protests failed to change the internal political situation in the Fatah - controlled West Bank and the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) in the Gaza Strip. For what reason? The events that began in Tunis in December 2010 and affected a number of countries in North Africa, the Arabian Peninsula and the Middle East, dubbed the "Arab Spring", will definitely have far-reaching consequences, according to the American historian Rashid Khalidi*, with a possible change in the balance of power in the region3. Russian orientalist A. M. Vasiliev, in his analytical review "Tsunami of Revolutions" - one of the first publications in our scientific literature about the "Arab Spring" - noted that there will no longer be dictators obedient to Washington who could ignore the opinion of their own peoples.4 The attitude of the United States towards the Palestinian-Israeli problem, in particular, remained unchanged: formal support for the idea of creating two states within the 1967 borders with permanent Palestinian borders with Israel, Jordan, Egypt,and permanent Israeli borders with Palestine. 5 In Israel, the revolutionary events are seen as the most inopport ... Read more