The Violent Rise of Palestine's Lost Generation

Abstract

The ‘Oslo generation,’ the youth of Palestine born after the 1993 Oslo Agreement, is Palestine’s lost generation. They have experienced a near complete exclusion from ordinary political participation, dominated by the elders of the Palestinian national movement. Their trust in the parent generation and the Palestinian National Authority has been undermined equally. The vacuum created by the weakened parental and national authority has been filled with youths who first and foremost follow their age peers. The protests and knife attacks seen in the West Bank during the autumn 2015 were obviously a protest against the Israeli occupation. However, they were also an expression of a clash of generations and the rise of a lost generation.