Khaled Abu Toameh has written  the most insightful articles analysing the recent protests in the West Bank that I have read recently.

In a September 14 article "A Palestinian Spring: A Renewed bid to Remove Fayyad (which is worth a full read) http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3346/palestinian-spring-fayyad, he reveals that  Palestinian Security Forces had been instructed not to prevent the protestors from burning posters of Prime Minister Salam Fayyad  in the hopes that the protests would lead to Fayyad leaving the political stage.

"For years, Abbas and Fatah have been trying  to replace Fayyad with one of their own so that they could regain control over the Palestinian Authority’s finances", says Abu Toameh. This hasn’t been easy since the US and most Western donors have repeatedly made it clear to Abbas that removing Fayyad from his post would prompt them to reconsider financial aid to the Palestinians

 Abu Toameh writes:

"Fatah leaders in the West Bank were hoping that the street protests would force Fayyad to resign. But the prime minister’s refusal to succumb to the immense pressure (and threats) has left most of these leaders deeply disappointed."

"As soon as protesters took to the streets in a number of West Bank cities last week to demand the resignation of Fayyad, Abbas, who was in Cairo, declared that the "Palestinian Spring" had begun and that he supported the "just demands" of the demonstrators."

Abu Toameh relates that Abbas’s comment was seen as giving the protestors a green light to go ahead and create enough mischief that Fayayad would be ousted. PA security forces didn’t intervene as protestors condemned Fayyad as an American and Israeli agent.  In my own interviews with Palestinians, the notion that Fayyad is a US puppet or plant  has come up quite frequently.

Abu Toameh has indicated that Fatah activists were organizing and leading the anti-Fayyad protests.

He concludes, "The recent protests in the West Bank over the economic hardships do not signal the beginning of a "Palestinian Spring." Rather, they are seen by many Palestinians in the context of the ongoing behind-the-scenes power struggle between Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s ruling Fatah faction and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad."

Instead of working with Fayyad to face the crisis, Abbas preferred to spend the week in India, rather than back up Fayyad on the home front.  He hoped that the focused attacks on Fayyad would send a signal to the American’s and European’s that Fayyad’s shelf life had expired.

As Abu Toameh writes:

"But as soon as some of the protesters began directing their criticism also against Abbas and demanding an end to the Oslo Accords, Palestinian Authority officials warned that "outside elements" had infiltrated the ranks of the protesters in order to serve "foreign agendas."

"The "outside elements," the officials claimed, were linked to Israel, Hamas, Iran and all the enemies of the Palestinians."

According to Abu Toameh, Abbas and Fatah were  hoping that the scenes of anarchy on Palestinian streets would put pressure on many Arab countries to resume financial aid to the Palestinian Authority, and to fulfill their pledges of aid which have not all come in. Abbas and Fatah were also hoping that the protests would persuade the Americans and Europeans to increase financial aid to the Palestinians, put pressure on Israel to accede to Palestinain preconditions for re-starting peace talks, and bring the limelight back to the Palestinian cause, instead of the threat by Iran. [Abbas himself had jut visited Iran]. 

Abu Toameh also is of the view that Abbas hoped to blame Israel for the PA’s economic problems, such that this would divert attention away from his own failures.

It would seem that  Abu Toameh’s analysis is correct in that the protests managed to get the European Union to pour more money into the Paelstinian Authority coffers. On the same day that Abu Toameh wrote his article, the European Union  announced what they termed as " new funding of €100 million for Palestine in the areas of water and  sanitation and supporting refugees, as well as a package of support to Area C (the part of the West Bank under direct Israeli occupation), amongst other things. The EU is the largest donor to the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT)." http://www.eu-un.europa.eu/articles/en/article_12585_en.htm