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The New Palestinians
(Al-Monitor) Ben Caspit - The Israeli security establishment is seeking to define, characterize and restrain the young Palestinians leading the current terror wave. The new Palestinian defies authority and is not subject to any kind of higher hierarchy. He was around 3 or 5 years old during the second intifada (2000-2005) and doesn't really remember those years when more than 1,000 Israelis and 3,000 Palestinians were killed. The new Palestinian goes to college. At least 30,000 Palestinians earn undergraduate degrees every year in the West Bank and another 20,000 in Gaza. But there is nothing they can do with their degrees. There are no decent positions, no high-tech jobs and no serious economic infrastructure. The new Palestinian has no tangible hope of accomplishing the things that he sees others achieving on social networks. The new Palestinian is convinced that he is in the right, blind to the positions of others, and follows the international community's stance on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and draws encouragement from it. He is completely open to the various conspiracy theories about Israel that spread through the Arab street. According to Israeli security experts, Israel is now "paying" for things that it is not even guilty of. The economies of the Arab states in general have long been weak, and the Palestinian economy in particular cannot give its youths any real hope of improvement. The new Palestinian is unaware that compared to the other Arabs in the Middle East today, his situation is better than theirs. The only Arab region in which electricity is available 24/7 is in the West Bank. The same is true regarding infant mortality and the standard of medical care.