The Palestinian Fatalism

It's election day!

Unfortunately, since I'm 7 hours ahead of the action, by the time I wake up, everything will be decided-the new president of the United States will be declared. (Unless ballots go missing, or machines start breaking down and dropping or switching votes, or someone demands a recount and sues the other, or etc. )

There's a lot of buzz here in Israel-it's almost as if the Israelis know more about the elections than a lot of the American students around here. And relevantly, here's a funny article I saw in the NYT.

It seems that the rest of the world has more at stake in these elections than Americans do.

"When America catches a cold, the rest of the world gets the flu."

Anyway, last time I wrote about the idea of fatalism in Israel and really only focused on the Israeli attitude. Coincidentally, the next day, I went to the Givat Ram campus of Hebrew University, which is located in West Jerusalem to go do some research for my internship in the UN archives. While I was flipping through random sources, I came upon a UNICEF booklet titled: "Palestinian Children in the Labor Market".

Especially around East Jerusalem, it's fairly common to see young Palestinian boys usually around 11-16 years old in the middle of the roads offering their windshield wiping services or selling packs of tissues to temporarily stopped cars. It's hard enough to see children doing this and even harder when you know they should be going to school instead but most of them don't have a choice because they're trying to help their poor families.

One time I witnessed a particularly disheartening scene when I was waiting to cross the street, and the usual Palestinian boys were there. One boy with a bucket was waiting for the man inside a car to pay him while the car behind was honking and screaming in an unnecessary rage of impatience because the light had just turned green. As the car drove by the boy, the man inside yelled something at the boy. After a second, the boy in response kicked his plastic bucket into the air as his younger companion watched helplessly as it shattered into a million shards onto the pavement. They couldn't have been older than 14 years old.

I remembered this scene when I found this booklet, and as I was flipping through it, I happened upon a section under the topic of "Pessimism and Fatalism".

It described,
"These feelings are widespread and reflect a general state in society...The folowing statements reflect the severity of the problem:

• We live a desperate life.
• Surely we will die as martyrs.
• I feel I am going to die when I am 20 years old.
• We live in a cemetery.
  
• I wish martyrdom.
  
• I wish martyrdom or invasion comes.
• Death is better than this life.
  

These statements confirm that political and social violence, which children are subjected to, absence of national freedom and the difficult economic circumstances negatively impact the psychological aspect of children and make them depressed. Some of them do not try to improve the quality of their lives and consider salvation beyond their capacity. These feelings lead to actions considered by society as immoral-such as: smoking and chasing after women"

-Birzeit University: Development Studies Program

I must clarify though, that I believe this study specifically focused on a particular demographic of the Palestinian population in Israel. I do not believe these feelings apply so much for Arab-Israelis, but I think they are appropriate for many Palestinians in refugee camps and those stuck in the West Bank and Gaza.

Arab-Israelis definitely have more opportunities than the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, but like I said before, they too think a peace is far in the coming.

Although this study reflects the results of a youth demographic, this information is still relevant in assessing the mood of society as a whole.