As’ad Abu Khalil points to this report of a United Nations Development Programme survey of 17-24 year olds in the West Bank and Gaza.
Abu Khalil is suspicious of the motives of the survey and the questions the methodology, and I think his concerns are valid, but I think I like the answer to one particular question much more than he does.
When asked to define their identity, 47 percent called themselves Muslims, 28 percent Palestinians, 14 percent humans and 10 percent Arabs.
He’s right to say that this doesn’t tell us how many of the youth feel that there is any conflict between Palestinian and Muslim identity and there’s no reason to assume that large numbers do. However, the fact that such a high number seem to place the “Muslim” identity before the “Palestinian” identity despite growing up in such a cauldron of Nationalism is an indication of the extent to which Islamic trends in general are ascendant in the territories.
Other interesting findings: More than 80 percent of youth reported themselves as “depressed” including 55 percent in the Gaza Strip who said they were “extremely depressed.”
Also, 69 percent said the use of violence to resolve the conflict was not very helpful, with only 8 percent saying it was an important tool.
