Female shahids of Palestine and the future of the Middle East

As the Middle East is heating up more and more, we hear about increasing numbers of young girls deciding to commit suicide attacks, most of them in Jerusalem aand the West Bank against Israelis.  One of these cases is that of Rasha Oweiss,  a 23 year old university student who had been planning to get married soon. On Nov. 9 she approached an Israeli checkpoint with a knife raised in her hand.  Of course, she was shot dead.  Her bag contained a letter that said “Forgive me, I cannot bear what I am seeing anymore. There’s no other way except this path.”

Most outside reaction was "Oh, she could not live any more under the cruel Israeli occupation."   Let us have a closer look at the case.  The whole Middle East is in flames, a lot of people are in a much worse situation than these young women.  So what can the triggering cause be for their extreme action?

Rasha attended university, her day to day experience meant mostly Israeli security checks, humiliating as they may be.  There are more disturbing forces at play here.  To quote the aunt of one of the youngest victims, Hadeel Awwad, who at 14 walked into a market and started to stab people, one of them an Arab man whom she had mistaken for an Israeli: “They (the ruling Islamic militant forces) inflame the emotions of children, they play on their most sensitive spots, with footages of clashes and death.”  With these words Manal Awwad, Hadeel's aunt, loudly accuses Hammas and Islamic Jihad for their constant manipulative propaganda broadcasts that blare out their messages 24/7 towards these young, receptive minds, urging them to "take action", commit suicide attacks, all for the greater glory of a future Palestine cleansed of Jews.

My heart goes out to the suffering families, it aching for these young victims. Their blood is on the heads of those who teach them to hate, who keep inflaming them, all in the name of their own political interests.  Where are the roots of all this?  Of Daesh calling on our children here in the West, painting romantic images of a false heroism?

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not central any more to the Middle East problem.  A lot of people are pessimistic about the future. Aaron David Miller from the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars, who used to work at the US State Department during the last Camp David summit, is of the opinion that "rarely does an entire region of the world melt down roughly at the same time, with more moving parts all running in the wrong direction.  It’s going to get worse before it gets worse.”

Yet, not everybody sees everything in black.  Bessma Momani, who is a senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, puts her hope in the Arab youth in her new book called Arab Dawn.  In an interview with Alia Dharssi she expresses her hopes based on a lot of interviews she conducted throughout the Middle East, listening to the hopes and aspirations of a lot of young people there.  The question is, will this next generation be able to withstand, or even overcome, the power hungry negative forces of the present and change the directions of their populations to strive for peaceful solutions?  I hope they will...