Seventy percent of West Bank andGaza's population is under the age of 30, and theirshare will continue to grow in the years ahead. Theaspirations and ambitions of this large and growingpopulation of children and youth have the potential todefine the future of the West Bank and Gaza. This assessmentseeks to contribute to the understanding of factors drivingthe choices of young men and women at this critical junctureof their lives, with a particular emphasis on the roles thatchanging gender norms and the conflict environment arehaving on their aspirations for education, jobs, and formingfamilies. Young Palestinians are moving into adulthood in aworld surrounded by roadblocks and barriers, and gripped bysoaring unemployment and uncertainty about what theirfutures may hold. Still, this generation remains optimisticand ambitious. They are pursuing high school and collegedegrees, and hanging on to expectations for better jobs andbetter lives than was possible for their parent'sgeneration. In the face of such bleak prospects, why? Whatis driving these youth's aspirations for high levels ofeducation and good jobs? To provide a broad context for theyouth's testimonies, this report first takes stock ofdevelopments affecting the West Bank and Gaza over the pastdecade. In this period, the Palestinian territorieswitnessed two major episodes of conflict: the secondintifada beginning in 2000 and the crisis in Gaza in 2007.Both episodes had severe and wide-ranging economicrepercussions, and were accompanied by restrictions oninternal and external mobility of people and goods. As aresult, in the last decade, the West Bank and Gaza haswitnessed economic volatility without parallel (even incomparison to countries affected by large financial crises),massive spikes in poverty, and some of the highest rates ofunemployment in the world. Young people's unemploymentrates are even higher, and much more so for young women. Theyouth's focus groups indicate that traditional gendernorms remain very strong in their society, and mainly seemto be reinforced by the difficult conflict environment.Men's status as the breadwinners means that boys,especially from poor families, are likely to withdraw fromschool sooner than girls in order to take up income earningroles; and the weak economy intensifies these pressures.
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