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<h1 class="title">The anger of Palestine's 'lost' generation</h1>
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<div class="stamp">Oct. 16, 2015<br>
<b><small><small><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=768277">http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=768277</a></small></small></b><br>
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<div class="authorClass">By: Killian Redden<br>
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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.
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<span style="font-weight: bold;">Expression of anger<br>
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</span>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.”
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<span style="font-weight: bold;">Lack of leadership</span><br>
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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.”
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<span style="font-weight: bold;">'No other option'<br>
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</span>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. </div>
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<div class="moz-signature">-- <br>
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415 863.9977
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