«Dialogue with Youth» hosts Fatah leader Ibrahim Abu al-Naja

Pal-Think for Strategic Studies held, on Sunday 17 May 2015, at its headquarters in the Gaza Strip, the third dialogue meeting within its special programme “Dialogue with the Youth”, which comprises a series of dialogue sessions joining the youth from one side, and the leaders of Palestinian thought, politics, and civil society from the other side.

The third dialogue meeting — which included an elite of youth, journalists, and interested persons — hosted Mr Ibrahim Abu al-Naja, member of the Revolutionary Council of the Fatah movement and secretary of the movement's higher leading body in the Strip. The meeting took up the developments of the Palestinian political situation in general, the developments of the Fatah movement's situation in particular, the Palestinian reconciliation and the popular movement to end the division, and many other issues.

Mr Abu al-Naja opened the meeting welcoming the elite of attending youth, saying: “With the likes of you present in Gaza, we are well” — and affirmed the importance of holding such meetings, which open the field for the communication of generations and minds, in what contributes to building a sustainable enlightening youth movement that leads society toward flourishing and development.

Mr Abu al-Naja focused in his dialogue with the youth on many important issues: the issue of the reconciliation, the current political situation of the Fatah movement, the movement's strategic vision of the future, and the youth's role in exiting the current situation. He touched in the course of his talk on the universities' role in giving the youth the needed space to express themselves, their aspirations, and their hopes in society, and affirmed that the nucleus of Palestinian work set off from the student councils until it became the focus of everyone's attention, and from the pulse of the street, which took part in the enactment of many laws in Palestinian legislation.

From their side, the attending youth expressed their constant need for communication with officials and decision-holders, for what is in that of influence on the widening of their perceptions and their capacity for mature thinking in dealing with the problems and challenges facing them in society.

The attending youth's questions centred on the following subjects: the current political situation and the popular movement, the strategy of the reconciliation in the future solutions with Israel, the culture of pluralism and communal tolerance, the transformations in the political visions of the Palestinian organisations in recent decades, the Palestinian constants, Fatah's vision of the national project in light of the division, the reforms of the Palestine Liberation Organization, the reforms of the employees' system, and the absence of communication between the leadership and the youth and its reflections on the Palestinian situation.

At the end of the meeting all valued the efforts behind this purposeful meeting, and the attendees asked of Pal-Think that such meetings be sustainable, and that the dialogue of the minds and the different generations not stop at a certain limit — since the adoption of such dialogue meetings, which strengthen the acceptance of others, is believed to be the basis of solving many of society's pending problems, and has a positive effect on the youth from one side and on society from the other side.

It is pointed out that the programme “Dialogue with the Youth”, which Pal-Think launched about a month ago, aims at strengthening and deepening the culture of rational professional dialogue among the youth, and breaking the gulf between decision-holders and citizens, specifically the youth sector. This meeting is considered the third within the programme, as two separate meetings were held, hosting each of the leader in the Hamas movement and former minister of health in the national unity government, Dr Basem Naim, and the leader in the Popular Front, comrade Kayed al-Ghoul.