«Gaza's youth fleeing on death boats»: a discussion on the «Youth Participate» radio programme

In the eighth episode of the radio programme “Youth Participate”, the two young women Amal Abu Qamar and Yasmin al-Mabhouh discussed their research paper titled “The flight of Gazan youth in the boats of death”, within the activities of the project “Strengthening the democratic participation of Palestinian youth”, carried out by the Pal-Think for Strategic Studies institution and funded by the Government of Canada.

At the meeting's beginning the youth activist Izz al-Din Qouta spoke of the state of despair and lostness the youth in the Gaza Strip have reached, which has pushed them toward the “boats of death” in the hope they find what fulfils their ambition in the other states — tracing the reasons for this phenomenon's spread to the division and the occupation, which have cast their shadows over Palestine so that the current dark situations formed in all fields, which in their turn produced several crises, at their head unemployment, in addition to the crisis-ridden political situation that has deprived the youth of their civil and democratic rights.

He added that what pushes the youth toward the gamble of undergoing the experience of irregular migration and wagering their lives relates also to the absence of real awareness of the suffering of the refugees in the states that constrict them, and the rosy picture promoted by some forms an attracting factor for them — making clear that the crises in the region have increased the numbers of refugees and migrants in the world.

The young woman Amal Abu Qamar began the talk about her research paper, which took up the difference between regular and irregular migration, summarising the ways of entering a state in the known official form and following the state's laws, compared with the unofficial ways. From her side, the young woman Yasmin al-Mabhouh took up the political role in bringing about the phenomenon of irregular migration according to the research paper — namely the occupation and its imposition of the blockade on the Gaza Strip, the division and the political condition resulting from it, and the weakness of the political discourse dominated by the character of slogans far from reality and its problems — adding that the spread of unemployment and its reaching 45% among the youth and the deterioration of economic life have contributed to increasing the youth's thinking of migration.

Abu Qamar continued her talk about the divisions of the migrants according to age category, academic qualifications, and competences, pointing to the “migration brokers” who exploit the migrants' need and claim to present them facilitations in exchange for securing their “irregular” journey.

The guests agreed that improving the existing situation in the Strip and providing the foundations of life the citizen needs reduces the rates of the youth's rush toward irregular migration and will reduce their wish to flee the Gaza Strip — affirming that this step, and the joining of efforts between the various working institutions, “governmental, civil, non-governmental, and educational”, is the most important deterrent of this phenomenon.