Nine years ago, for a brief period, IDYW was aware of a group, Gaza Youth Break Out [GBYO]. We had stumbled over its Facebook page, which is now long gone. As it was, not to our credit, we lost touch.
On the 19th of July, 2014 we posted the following on our website.
Gaza Youth Speak Out: Enough is Enough!
The group, Gaza Youth Break Out [GBYO], unfailingly brave in their criticisms of both Fatah and Hamas within Palestinian politics, send a message of anguish in the face of the Israeli assault.
We do not want to hate, we do not want to feel all of these feelings, we do not want to be victims anymore. ENOUGH! Enough pain, enough tears, enough suffering, enough control, limitations, unjust justifications, terror, torture, excuses, bombings, sleepless nights, dead civilians, black memories, bleak future, heart-aching present, disturbed politics, fanatic politicians, religious bullshit, enough incarceration! WE SAY STOP! This is not the future we want!
A fortnight later we linked to an opinion piece in the Guardian by Paul Mason, then the economics editor of Channel Four News, entitled ‘Gaza is not as I expected. Amid the terror, there is hope’. Documenting the oppressive conditions inside Gaza he noted,
I have lost track of how many times I’ve met a young guy, 18 or 19 years old, proud not to be a fighter, a militant, or a duck-and-dive artist on the street. When you ask what his job is, the common answer is “carpenter”. Working with wood – not metal or computer code – is the limit of what the blockade has enabled the skilled manual worker here to achieve.
Faced with such hopelessness, naturally, many become resigned: “Living is the same as being dead” is a phrase you hear among young men. It is the perfect rationale for the nihilist military organisation some choose to join. But its opposite is the resourcefulness that rewires a house after its front has been blown off; that sits on the carpet making bread on a hot pan after a home has been reduced to dust.
Almost a decade later, hope is in short supply – the resourcefulness exhausted?
IN DEFENCE OF YOUTH WORK 
last night, 12/10/23 I met 3 young Palestinian girls outside our youth club, all in traditional headdresses, bearing a badge saying Free Palestine. I chatted with them, welcomed them, and told them I was sorry for their families’ situation. I hope they come back. There is hope among the young, their inclination to look forward and raise hope has always impressed me.