	Generational Dynamics
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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 10-Dec-06
Interviews with young Gazans spotlight road to war

Web Log - December, 2006

Interviews with young Gazans spotlight road to war

For these young fighters, attacking Israel is an end, rather than a means to a political end.

The interviews appeared in an article in the Boston Globe last week.

It's so rare for the mainstream media to report on any generational issue, no matter how obvious and important it is, that I was startled to see this article.

According to the article,

"Interviews with the militants reveal a bleak insight, casting doubt on the prospects for peace as autonomous militant groups show complete disregard for political action, and their way of thinking increasingly dominates their factions' leadership.

"For 12 years we have been in peace negotiations, we have given up many things, but achieved nothing," said Abu Ali, 20, who said he was a fighter in the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, ostensibly the most moderate militant faction because of its link to Fatah, which recognizes Israel.

"We don't believe in a political solution, because Israel will never respect it," Abu Ali said. "So we are forced to seek a military solution, even though Israel is stronger. There will be no peace" in the Palestinian territories, he said."

The young militants expressed a range of views. A relatively mild view is that they use violence "to erect a balance of fear with the Israelis." A more extreme view is that "The Jews will not leave the land unless they are killed."

This is what people don't understand, and it's a major finding of Generational Dynamics research: That these major genocidal crisis wars that I'm always talking about are not started by adults most of the time; instead, they're started by a young generation of militants.

As the article says, "their way of thinking increasingly dominates their factions' leadership."

We can now identify three distinct generational groups within the Palestinians, especially within Gaza:

The Old Guard. These are people born before 1949, including Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas. Having lived through and survived the genocidal 1940s war between Jews and Arabs, they've made it their life goal to keep any such war from occurring again. They negotiated the 1994 Oslo peace agreement with Israel. Arafat died in 2004, and Abbas is now 71. This generation has all but disappeared.

Hamas Generation. Born in the decades following the 1940s war, they have no personal memory of its horrors. Hamas was formed in the early 1980s. It began the first Intifada, starting in 1989. They agreed to a ceasefire when the Oslo agreement was signed, but refused to honor the agreement or recognize Israel. Today, they're more and more the generation in charge, as the Old Guard generation disappears. They use violence against Israel for political ends.

The Young Guard. This is the generation of young militants described above. Born since 1980, they consider violence against Israelis as an end in itself, and many (or perhaps most) are committed to the destruction of Israel.

According to a 2002 article in Foreign Affairs magazine, "Yasser Arafat has been neither an orchestrator nor a spectator of the second intifada; he has been its target. A young guard of Palestinian nationalists, angry at both Israel and the corrupt Palestinian Authority, lies behind the violence. Arafat must reform his government and secure a credible peace process -- before it's too late."

I love the phrase "before it's too late." Journalists and politicians use it all the time as a cliché. Well, the government was never reformed, so now presumably "it's too late."

Furthermore, as I've pointed out many times, the median age of the Gaza population is 15.8, so it's pretty much the Young Guard generation that's running Gaza.

The Boston Globe article summarizes their attitude toward Hamas as follows: "While the political leadership of Hamas and the other groups occasionally lays out terms for negotiating with Israel, such as the release of Palestinian prisoners or the cessation of attacks, the young fighters say they see politics as a dead end, an old man's game."

This is one of the very few mainstream media articles I've read that show any insight into this situation, although it doesn't draw the obvious conclusions: That there's no point in negotiating with either Abbas or Hamas, since anything that these old men do or agree to is irrelevant to the young militants.

Some people appear to believe that as the young militants grow older, they'll "mellow." According to Generational Dynamics research, that will not happen. As they grow older they'll retain the same attitude. This means that the number of "moderates" goes down every day, and the number of "militants" increases every day.

Generational Dynamics predicts that the Mideast is headed for a new genocidal war, replaying the crisis war between Arabs and Jews of the 1940s. As I wrote in 2003, the disappearance of Yasser Arafat and Ariel Sharon would signal a generational change that would lead to a major conflagration within a few years.

This prediction has been trending true with a vengeance. After Yasser Arafat died, there was a period of a few weeks, culminating in the election of Mahmoud Abbas as Palestinian President, when things appeared to be getting "hopeful." But since January, 2005, hardly a single day has passed when the situation hasn't gotten measurably worse. Israel's unilateral withdrawal from Gaza and the Palestinian legislative elections were events that were supposed to bring peace and freedom; instead, they were disastrous in just about every way possible. Generational Dynamics predicts that this descent into chaos will continue, irrespective of any of the 79 proposals in the Iraq Study Group report. (10-Dec-06) Permanent Link
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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 10-Dec-06 Interviews with young Gazans spotlight road to war

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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 10-Dec-06
Interviews with young Gazans spotlight road to war