Palestinian Youth Perceptions of the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict

Abstract

The Palestinian-Israeli conflict is the longest ongoing protracted conflict in contemporary times. This research seeks to gain insight on the root of the conflict based on Palestinian youth perceptions and to make meaning of their experiences. Research was conducted on two levels. First, an innovative third party neutral, Participatory Action Research-based YOUCAN Facilitation was conducted within Palestine, Israel and a Jordanian refugee camp. Second, ethnography was utilised as the researcher was fully immersed in Palestinian youth society for four months. Using Grounded Theory, the Palestinian youth groups’ self-produced themes of problems of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict could be grouped into nine super themes of problems. Allocating the groups’ self-assigned priority to each theme within the Supremes, the most important category of conflict could be identified. Based on Palestinian youth perceptions, Ideological, racism and differentiation problems are the most important problems underlying the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. These results give voice to the perceptions of Palestinian youth and bring to light a shocking explanation of a life of terror and conflict as experienced by Palestinian youth, whether it is mental, physical and/or emotional. The ethnography led to a major discovery in the order and structure of Palestinian youth’s everyday lives. The Palestinian youth generation was observed to be clearly divided into six Mannheimian generation units that are based on political ideology affiliation. These generation units are Political Islam, Nationalist, Apolitical Islam, Marxist, Veiled Political Islam and Veiled Apolitical Islam. Affiliation with apolitical ideology was observed to heavily impact and direct social, cultural, educational and political activities and interactions among Palestinian youth.