Steven Erlanger, Bureau Chief of the NY Times in Jerusalem, could hardly be labelled radical, let alone anti-Zionist or the like. In his latest piece from Nablus, he writes - not the first to do so by any means - of the despair confronting Palestinian youth. It makes for sobering reading and should not come as a surprise to anyone who has followed events in the Middle East.
"Their worried parents call them the lost generation of Palestine: its most radical, most accepting of violence and most despairing.
They are the children of the second intifada that began in 2000, growing up in a territory riven by infighting, seared by violence, occupied by Israel, largely cut off from the world and segmented by barriers and checkpoints.
To hear these young people talk is to listen in on budding nihilism and a loss of hope.
“Ever since we were little, we see guns and tanks, and little kids wanting little guns to fight against Israel,” said Raed Debie, 24, a student at An Najah University here.
Issa Khalil, 25, broke in, agitated. “We never see anything good in our lives,” he said. He was arrested for throwing stones in the first intifada, the civil disobedience that began in the late 1980s and led to the 1993 Oslo accords with Israel. He was arrested again in the second uprising as the agreement faltered.
“And for what?” he asked. “I wasted 14 years of my life. We all did. For five years I haven’t left Nablus. Here there’s unemployment and no peace; it retreats, we go backward.”
While generations of young Palestinians have grown up stateless, seething at Israel as the visible agent of oppression, this generation is uniquely stymied."
"Their worried parents call them the lost generation of Palestine: its most radical, most accepting of violence and most despairing.
They are the children of the second intifada that began in 2000, growing up in a territory riven by infighting, seared by violence, occupied by Israel, largely cut off from the world and segmented by barriers and checkpoints.
To hear these young people talk is to listen in on budding nihilism and a loss of hope.
“Ever since we were little, we see guns and tanks, and little kids wanting little guns to fight against Israel,” said Raed Debie, 24, a student at An Najah University here.
Issa Khalil, 25, broke in, agitated. “We never see anything good in our lives,” he said. He was arrested for throwing stones in the first intifada, the civil disobedience that began in the late 1980s and led to the 1993 Oslo accords with Israel. He was arrested again in the second uprising as the agreement faltered.
“And for what?” he asked. “I wasted 14 years of my life. We all did. For five years I haven’t left Nablus. Here there’s unemployment and no peace; it retreats, we go backward.”
While generations of young Palestinians have grown up stateless, seething at Israel as the visible agent of oppression, this generation is uniquely stymied."
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