For Younger Palestinians, Crisis is a Way of Life
by Nathan J. Brown
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Feb 19, 2026
"Palestinian youth are a foreign country; they do things differently there—not because they reject politics, but because the political institutions around them no longer function. But the implications for diplomacy and politics have not sunk in…
"Younger Palestinians never speak in a single voice except, to my hearing, about two things: First, nobody else listens to them; and second, nobody else speaks for them… I will not attempt to fill the gap by speaking or advocating for them, but I will try to convey to readers what I have heard…
“For all their participation in global culture, younger Palestinians are acutely aware of their immediate surroundings—an environment in which all institutions and leaders have failed them. On both a global and a local level, they feel unrepresented and unheard…
"In discussions in the West Bank, I observed that my younger interlocutors often saw leadership as both structurally and personally flawed—and as propped up only because of its international usefulness…
"By far the most common phrase I heard from young Palestinians bypasses all political slogans and programs: ‘normal life.’ When I pressed for details, I heard strikingly personal desires: to travel without restriction, to speak and socialize freely, to live securely.…
"For all the darkness, prevailing ideas in Palestine do not consist of total despair—they are predicated on the slowness of time, not the absence of hope…
"Can anything be done to move things toward a trajectory that offers harbor from the current and coming storm and allows those with constructive ideas to take the helm when the tempest has passed?"
Nathan J. Brown is a Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Nonresident Senior Fellow in their Middle East Program and a professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University.
About Heart of a Nation
Empowering the next generation of American, Israeli, and Palestinian change-makers to embrace better, together.
אנחנו מכנסים הוגים מובילים, פעילים חברתיים, ומחוללי שינוי לעתיד, אמריקאים, ישראלים ופלסטינאים, המחויבים לשיפור החברות שלהם.
نحن أمريكيون وإسرائيليون وفلسطينيون نبني ونكوّن روابط من أجل التعلم والتفكير والمشاركة معًا حتى نشجع الحلول التقدمية بشأن القضايا التي تهمنا جميعًا.