Tragic news spread among youth in Gaza last week: Mohanned Younis, a young writer, just 22 years old, took his own life. Younis, who had graduated from a pharmacology program, wrote short stories. Some of his stories won prizes, and one was most recently nominated for the A.M. Qattan Foundation literary prize. He had tried on numerous occasions to leave the Gaza Strip in order to advance his writing career, to fulfill his dreams. In much of his writing, he touched on the depressing reality in Gaza, which he described as unbearable and not survivable — a feeling which is apparently shared by many other youth in Gaza.
According to the Facebook page of “We Are Not Numbers,” which encourages youth in Gaza to tell their stories, Younis is just the latest suicide among youth in Gaza. When the unemployment rate for people under 30 stands at 60 percent; when the possibility of leaving Gaza to study elsewhere, to develop oneself, and certainly just to travel, has been reduced to almost zero; when the lack of electricity makes the most basic daily tasks unthinkably difficult; when there is a military attack, destruction and killing every few years; and when the prospects of hope and opportunity appear further and slimmer than ever — tragic outcomes are almost unavoidable.
News of Younis’s death was joined by another piece of tragic news this week: illustrator Moath al-Haj, 30, was found dead in his Gaza home. Al-Haj, who was orphaned at a young age, was well known among young, educated Palestinians for his sharp and expressive illustrations, in which he used clean lines to demonstrate the difficulties of his life and the situation in Gaza, primarily among the youth. His death led to impassioned discussions on social networks and many people attributed his death to the heartbreak of his life circumstances.
