[News] The anger of Palestine's 'lost' generation

[Anti-Imperialist News]

  The anger of Palestine's 'lost' generation

Oct. 16, 2015
*http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=768277*

By: Killian Redden

BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) -- A few weeks before an Israeli soldier shot him 
through the stomach, Mutaz Zawahreh discovered a love of the sea.On the 
coast of Brittany, Mutaz and two friends from Duheisha refugee camp, 
Murad Ouda and Issa al-Saifi, amazed the French by running into the 
frigid waters of the north Atlantic.Even in the rain they went to the 
beach, Issa told Ma’an, sometimes just to sit and watch the ocean -- 
“because we already knew we would not see it again.”The three 
Palestinians spent two months in France as part of an educational 
program organized by a center in Duheisha.But as their visit progressed, 
the first signs of unrest began to show in the occupied Palestinian 
territory, and the three grew anxious to return home.Mutaz’s brother, 
Ghassan, had begun a hunger strike in an Israeli prison to protest his 
internment without charge, and his health was beginning to 
deteriorate.The three returned, and several days later Ghassan ended his 
hunger strike when Israel agreed to release him in November. But the 
brothers never saw each other.On Oct. 13, at a demonstration before 
Israel’s separation wall in northern Bethlehem, Mutaz was shot dead, the 
30th Palestinian to be killed by Israeli forces in under two weeks.

Expression of anger

Mutaz was one of thousands of young Palestinians no longer able to 
contain their anger when he joined the protesters in throwing stones at 
Israeli soldiers.Only before the wall, “facing their weapons with his 
body,” was Mutaz able to give expression to his feelings, his friend 
Murad said."He couldn't take it anymore," said Murad, especially after 
he had seen "how free life could be" in France.For Murad, the protests 
that have swept the occupied Palestinian territory in recent days are 
only “the tip of the mountain,” the outward expression of what he called 
an “internal intifada” that has been raging within most people for 
years.“It is about being oppressed some 60, 70 years,” he said. “(The 
protests) are just the anger that has exploded.”Issa agreed that while 
outsiders “judged” Palestinians for throwing stones, “no one has asked 
us why we are doing it.”The first time Issa threw a stone, he was only 
13 or 14 years old. At that age, he understood nothing of politics, he 
said. “We were just angry.”In Duheisha refugee camp, their childhood was 
marked by routine clashes and terrifying night raids by Israeli soldiers 
who would ransack their homes and take away their family members.As they 
grew older, they faced a constrained economy lacking in opportunity and 
severely restricted freedom of movement.Mutaz himself had been working 
two jobs when he was killed -- as a hotel security guard and a taxi 
driver. Most of his male relatives had spent time in prison.Murad said 
that young Palestinian protesters were neither terrorists nor heroes. 
“We are just normal people, living under every kind of oppression you 
can imagine.”

Lack of leadership

While anger has driven the recent wave of protests, there have been few 
attempts to channel that anger. The protests have been been marked by a 
lack of leadership and organization.Factional leaders -- at both a 
national and community level -- have played almost no role in the 
protests, while, the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority has committed 
itself to acting against them.Murad said that the lack of leaders was 
the result of Israel and the PA having worked for years to remove anyone 
who might effectively challenge the status quo.Growing up in Duheisha, 
Murad and Issa can recall regular community gatherings to discuss the 
camp’s issues -- whether political or social -- but in the absence of 
leaders, those meetings have largely stopped in recent years.Murad 
pointed, for example, to Nidal Abu Aker, an outspoken journalist and 
community leader in Duheisha, who has spent nearly 15 years of his life 
in Israel’s prisons.Abu Aker recently ended a 42-day hunger strike he 
undertook together with Zawahreh’s brother, Ghassan, and is set to be 
released in November, but Murad said he did not think it would be more 
than a few months before Abu Aker was re-arrested.“Everyone who has 
tried to lead something is killed or arrested,” he said. “Either you be 
silent, or you work with them.”

'No other option'

Void of leaders, there has been little sense of strategy to the 
protests, and some commentators have suggested that it is in both Israel 
and the PA’s interest to simply let the young Palestinians “vent” their 
rage.Issa acknowledged that Palestinians risking their lives to throw 
stones at Israel’s separation wall were unlikely to cause Israel any 
material damage.But at this stage, he said, no other options had been 
left, after decades of negotiations and attempts to apply international 
pressure had ended in failure.Of the young Palestinians that have taken 
to Bethlehem’s streets in recent days, they do not expect to apply real 
pressure on Israel, he said. They simply sought to show that they 
“reject oppression.”The protests are the cry of a Palestinian generation 
that has felt for too long that no one is listening to them.Issa said 
that, ultimately, he believed it was not so much strategy as it was the 
mentality of his generation, their refusal to forego freedom, that 
Israel feared. While the recent wave of protests may calm, that 
mentality was not going away.Issa said that during their trip to France, 
the three friends had not been able to understand how the French 
themselves did not run to the sea every day.It were almost as though 
they did not understand the value of their own freedom, he said, and the 
three friends laughed that perhaps the French were somehow more “lost” 
than they were.“At least here we had something to fight for,” he said.
-- 
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