A radio episode on youth's role in moving elections forward

“What is the Palestinian youth's role in moving the electoral process?” was the title of a radio episode carried out by Pal-Think for Strategic Studies on the local Zaman radio, during the weekly radio programme “Dialogue with Youth”, broadcast every Sunday at noon. Hosted during it were Yousef Salem, coordinator of the legal-aid unit at the Palestinian Bar Association, and the two members of the civic-education body at “Pal-Think” Suha Sukkar and Osama Naim. This comes within the project “Civic Education”, implemented by Pal-Think for Strategic Studies and funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which aims to strengthen democratic values and human rights among university students.

Sukkar opened her talk about how she joined the civic-education body, as she and her colleagues were chosen under objective conditions and after succeeding in the personal interviews. She then mentioned some of the intensive trainings they received at “Pal-Think” on gender, human rights, governance, political science, and others.

She said: “As youth, we were attached to the hope of the elections happening, and we were following closely the process of individuals' candidacies.” Sukkar added on the issue of the women's quota: “The Palestinians struggled for there to be a women's quota in the Legislative Council in 1996, even if in a simple form, despite the Palestinian people's non-acceptance at the time of the idea of a woman representing them — which is why women's participation rate in the Council was only 5%. As for 2006, there was a good proportion for women, and this was accompanied by communal awareness of the importance of women's work. Alongside this, Palestine signed the CEDAW convention, which rejects discrimination between man and woman.”

The civic-education body member affirmed that Palestinian youth are qualified, educated, and capable of change, saying: “From my point of view, if we waged a youth movement at the present time we would reach a result — we are a generation that carried burdens early and went through many experiences. Age in itself is not a problem; if we as youth united our efforts on social media there would be a glimmer of hope to change the reality, and we would reach a result.”

For his part, the civic-education body member Osama Naim pointed out during his talk that the goal of the civic-education project is to educate university youth at the time in which the elections were supposed to be held.

He said: “Pal-Think gave hope to youth to express their opinion on this process, and this is an achievement because it granted youth a platform. Not to mention that we received trainings and knowledge from experts of several fields and passed them to others. We kept stressing the necessity of accepting differing opinions at a time when an environment for youth in the Gaza Strip to express their political opinions is absent because of the conditions of the division, given the existence of censorship.”

On youth's participation in the electoral lists, Naim said: “When we saw the formation of the electoral lists we were frustrated as youth — there was no true representation of youth to express their aspirations. We were frustrated also because youth wanted any change to the painful reality imposed for 15 years, which is akin to a slow death. I as a young man was optimistic, and we were surprised by the postponement of the elections hours before the start of the electoral campaign.

For his part, Yousef Salem, coordinator of the legal-aid unit at the Palestinian Bar Association, said: “Palestinian law has entered the stage of non-legitimacy or non-law.

Salem continued: “Concerning the legal situation, we say that the decisions the President issues, being the president of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the president of the State of Palestine, are decree-laws in force in light of the exceptional situation we live. And the Legislative Council in Gaza imposes laws and passes them for implementation through the executive body.

The lawyer said: “The process of bringing youth into the electoral lists was something closer to an illusion, and I lived through myself the stage of the political co-optation of youth. But the saying that a young person of 24 years cannot enter the Legislative Council is refuted against its sayer — the evidence being that the leaders of the Palestinian revolution began their activity during their university studies.”

He continued: “And another example: the Palestinian youth who spoke to the Western media about the Palestinian cause and the issue of the displacement of the Palestinians were brilliant and performed distinguished work. Because they developed the Palestinian narrative in the international media, and there are other models