Word: palestinian
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...hardware required to create "e-Palestine" - computers and modems - is certainly in place in the occupied territories and throughout the diaspora. Today, a ubiquitous feature in the Palestinian camps across the Middle East is the internet cafe - a loud, smoky space crammed with young Palestinians clustered around a handful of computers, faces lit up by the glowing screens, communicating with other Palestinians they have never - and may never - meet...
...Online, Palestinian youths don't have to navigate the political allegiances - primarily to the warring Fatah and Hamas factions - that crisscross the camps and which have torn the West bank and Gaza apart. These tensions don't dominate "e-Palestine": experts estimate that up to 60% of young Palestinians are not members of any faction - an enormous break from the extremely high rate of party affiliation of previous generations...
...that have been placed between them. In one internet cafe in Beddawi camp in northern Lebanon, one teenager leaned over to show me his girlfriend in Gaza, smiling out at him through a grainy, time-delayed webcam shot. Men and women can communicate with an ease and frankness that Palestinian social mores are less permissive of. In his IM window, the young Palestinian book-ended a flirtatious message to his Gazan girlfriend with a line of heart and angel icons. He flashed a quick grin and hit enter...
...popular program, PalTalk, has chat rooms and forums with names like "Palestine News," "Jerusalem 4ever," and "Palestine4ever," all popular venues for Palestinian youth around the world to discuss ideas, news and share photos and videos from their own corner of the globe. "In the beginning it was just casual chatting and discussion, the themes were arts and culture and sport," says Abukeshek of the chat rooms he frequented before getting involved with Pal-youth.org. "But then I noticed more and more political chat rooms appearing over time - the Palestinians in Palestine had to express what was happening inside, and the Palestinians...
...hallmarks of Palestinian cultural resistance - poetry, graffiti, commemorative objects - that can be found on the walls of camps and in Palestinian homes now adorn the cyber-surfaces of "e-Palestine." IM windows are decorated with digital renderings of the Key, a symbol of exile that hangs on the walls of living rooms. The figure of Handala, cartoonist Naji al-Ali's iconic homage to the Palestinian refugee, adorns many social networking profiles. This year, to mark the sixtieth year of exile, what the Palestinians call the Nakbah - or "disaster" in Arabic - entire days in chatrooms and forums were dedicated...