Young Palestinian Activists Seize Initiative at Bab Al-Shams
The grassroots Palestinian move to erect an outpost in an area wanted by Israel for illegal settlements could be the start of a new tactic, Daoud Kuttab writes.
While so-called leaders of the Palestinian resistance from Fatah and Hamas were traveling to Egypt to hold talks in five star hotels, another group of Palestinians were actually doing work worthy of the words "liberation and resistance."
In an organized and disciplined manner, nearly 150 Palestinian youths along with some international solidarity supporters set up a Palestinian tent village and gave it the name Bab al-Shams — the Gate of the Sun. Cooperating with owners of Palestinian lands in areas south of Ramallah and East of Jerusalem, these new young revolutionaries did more to push the Palestinian political agenda than the well-paid fat cats that were loitering in Cairo hotels.
Bab al-Shams, the name of a novel about hope in spite of the catastrophe by Lebanese writer Elias Khoury, provided the new villagers with a name to their adventure that quickly became a Palestinian household name.
What the young, creative, disciplined and unaffiliated young Palestinians did put to shame the decades old revolutionaries. It was nonviolent, brought in focus the Israeli attempts to settle the E1 area and showed that people power can make a difference.
