Aboud OA Hamayel's Page

I ride a taxi heading from the world beyond, to the world here. In instance I was shocked by the perplexity on to which the people seem to have been caught with. A confusion of what comes next? If anything comes next, a sense of disillusionment with tomorrow, in short a nihilistic attitude towards life. Nihilism in Palestine means “the sense of hopelessness” and the complete loss of a futuristic outlook. The loss of hopefulness is rather self-evident. After 8 years of the second Intifadah and after more 4000 deaths, endless house demolitions, not to mention the endless small restrictions that defines the daily lives of Palestinians. This climaxed with the clashes between Hamas and Fattah and continuous divisions that surround the Palestinian cause.
The consequence of this hopelessness transcends beyond a narrow psychological individualistic outlook into the current fragmentation within Palestine. Cornel West an influential afro-American intellectual described this nihilism. In short he said “…the lived experience of coping with a life of horrifying meaninglessness, hopelessness, and (most important) lovelessness”. Although in Palestine it takes a different form and has different social and cultural dimension, the nihilism that exists here remains the same. What I mean by it here is that the Palestinians have lost cultural structures of meaning and feeling, of a real sense of belonging and solidarity.
These structures have slowly faded away and have been lost in a sea of mottos, political slogans and different cultural and geographic identities. None of which have truly dealt with the real threat that faces the Palestinian society which is nihilism. This nihilism is overwhelmingly present within the new generation of Palestinians who collectively and implicitly decided to never talk about politics, who their dreams lie in the unlikely possibility of moving abroad. This new generation rarely speak about the future, for them; the mere idea of future is not within their frame of reference. They do not dream, for dreaming is dangerous in Palestine. There is no sense of time in Palestine, for looking forward for something is rather ridiculous in Palestine. There is no sense of space, for space in Palestine means a complex network of checkpoints, regulations, soldiers, police and endless images of despair, in Palestine your space is what you want to run from.
The reality here is what created this nihilism, not to mention that it has been amplified by the current polarization of the two divided camps. The Palestinian Secular nationalists represented by Fattah and the Palestinian Islamist Nationalist represented by Hamas. Both of which have failed to deal with the nihilistic threat. Both have narrowly focused on political power and their relation to Israel and have been hiding under the sea of political slogans.
The solution lies in the politics of conversion as West framed it. In Palestine such political conversion should be focused on a new local leadership that transcends beyond tribal and geographic divisions. This new leadership should address the rise of political cynicism and amplify the best in Palestine. The new leadership should tackle the nihilistic threat as disease that not only endangers the social fabric of Palestine but could prove to be detrimental to the Palestinian National Movement.