The challenges of rebuilding and recovery: the day after the war and the future of Gaza's youth

Palestinian youth are a vital constituency, making up about 22% of the total population — and they live under the weight of chronic political blockage, a dependent economy, and shrinking civic space: caught, in effect, in a continuing battle in which their identity and standing are rewritten by the balance of power and the imposed political reality. In the Gaza Strip specifically — where the weight of the blockade imposed since 2007 meets modern colonial domination and internal political marginalisation — a new generation has grown up knowing nothing but political isolation and division. This generation — ambitious and highly educated, with graduate unemployment near 74% before the war — found itself shackled to a suffocating economy and a politics with no horizon, eroding its trust in the political system and its traditional structures. These conditions produced a strong pull towards «individual salvation»: about 37% of young people seriously considered emigration in search of the dignity and opportunity missing at home. The latest war on Gaza, waged since October 2023, was not a mere military escalation but a systematic operation targeting infrastructure and society alike, driving the existing crises to catastrophic levels: comprehensive destruction of the built, educational and social fabric; hundreds of thousands displaced; most universities and schools destroyed; the largest generation of persons with disabilities in Gaza's modern history; thousands of young victims living under unprecedented collective psychological trauma; and an educational rupture threatening to squander the human capital — turning the question of youth from a development challenge into a matter of national, social and existential security.

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