(Arabic). In Democracy in the Public Space. Muwatin Institute for Democracy and Human Rights – Birzeit University: 95-106, (2018).
This article traces the emergence and development of youth groups in Palestine as a novel tool of social and political organizing and activism, one that developed in concert with the revolutions of the Arab Spring. While occupying public spaces was the main feature of the Arab Spring, the Palestinian response to those revolutions was somewhat different. In 2011, after a short-lived attempt at demonstrating, Palestinian activists withdrew from public spaces and started organizing in small groups. Instead of organizing big demonstrations like their Egyptian counterparts, they focused their efforts on organizing public talks, discussions, art performances, community work, and reading groups. Through my personal engagement in such groups, I examined how they view and interact with the public/private space, focusing on their tactics and utilization of arts and culture as a tool of activism. This text has sparked a wide discussion among youth groups, where it was discussed as an attempt to understand, critique, and develop these democratic strategies. I first presented this text in a conference at Birzeit University tilted “Democracy in the Public Square”.