The Movement of Palestine's Youth

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

It appears that a new kind of life has begun to stir within Palestine’s youth, specifically in the central-eastern region, or what is called the West Bank — a life that carries within it concern for the homeland and its citizens and for correcting the course of the Palestinian cause. Some of the youth have begun to realize that Palestine is a trust upon all our necks, that the Palestinian people must change what they are in if they wish to restore their fixed national rights, and that the Palestinian leaderships must stop the nonsense and the labyrinths into which they have led the people.

Students from Birzeit University expelled the British consul from the campus, an act that expressed the extent of the youth’s awareness of Britain’s criminal role against Palestine and its people during and after the British Mandate, and their recognition that a person must guard his dignity and honor, and deal with aggressors and conspirators in a language that admits no appeasement.

The youth kept up their stance during Obama’s visit — Obama, who never stops supporting the Zionists in every field and arena, nor stops inflicting harm and humiliation on the Palestinians, despite the money he gives to the Palestinian Authority and the security services. Palestine’s youth have come to realize that America’s money is not given for God’s sake, but rather as a price for our abandoning our homeland. These young people defaced pictures of the American president, and forced officials to restore the map of Palestine in Bethlehem to the place from which it had been torn down.

…the violations, and keep watch over the comfort of the citizens; and goodness is always found in the youth.

There are several factors that have affected the role of Palestinian youth in guarding the national rights of the people and ensuring the proper conduct of civil life wherever the people are found. It is time now for Palestinian youth to move to the forefront. Our youth see the extent of the deterioration that has befallen Palestinian national unity, the level of resistance and confrontation of the ongoing Zionist aggression, and the performance of the Palestinian factions and the Arab positions toward the Palestinian cause — which has become a strategy of searching for peace with Israel instead of a strategy of deterring Israel.

It is important, however, that the youth movement hold fast to a number of things:

Steering away from Palestinian factional partisanship, which ultimately led to internal fighting and tarnished the image of the people before the world;

Adhering to a high moral standard in order to win the people’s trust and erase the bad image that some thugs previously painted of the intifadas and of the struggle of the Palestinian people;

Placing the utmost emphasis on education and confronting every attempt to disrupt teaching or to insult teachers and those responsible for education, and standing firmly against attempts at cheating by students, and against attempts to develop unpatriotic educational programs;

Sensing the civil and national concerns of the people and insisting on addressing them;

Searching for ways to achieve self-reliance, so that we may rid ourselves of the mentality of the beggar.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “تحرك شباب فلسطين” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.