Palestinian children: a transformation of national identity in the Abbas era

Abstract

The constant rendering of Palestinian national identity provides crucial insight not only to the current Palestinian community’s political status, but also to past and the future experiences. National identity echoes the intersectionality of history and local politics. For the last few decades, Palestinian national identity has been evolving with continuous alteration that encompasses local political discourse in the Palestinian community. Whereas it once embraced unity among different political ideologies, a shift occurred with Hamas election victory in 2006, which resulted in the division of the Palestinian community, whereby the Palestinian Authority, under Abbas leadership is ruling the West Bank, and Hamas is governing the Gaza Strip. This political tension has served to render national identity. Palestinian children echoed such politics in the construction of their national identity through their interpretation of personal experiences that are intertwined with current political events. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to show how Palestinian children articulated national identity in a post-Arafat/Abbas era, recognizing that national identity is not static.