The Magic of Palestinian Scientific Talent


It was the beginning of the year 2008, in a small room at the Arab Science and Technology Foundation in Ad-Doqi neighborhood, Cairo. Eight professionals from a number of Arab universities and scientific organisations gathered together for the Arab region’s first-ever event that focused on engaging youth in spreading the culture of scientific innovation and supporting Arab youth in this field. There were representatives from various Arab countries, but after brief introductions, we realized that the representative of the United Arab Emirates was originally a Palestinian, the representative of Jordan was originally a Palestinian, and, of course, the representative of Palestine was a Palestinian. I am not sure why, but I think after losing our land in the 1948 Nakba, and losing our hope in the 1967 Naksa, our priority became educating our people to confront the realities that depend on human capacities.

Together as representatives we held the “Made in the Arab World Competition” in 2009, and the Palestinian participants experienced huge success by winning four of the seven prizes. This success wasn’t granted out of sympathy for the ever-needy occupied people; it was fully earned after years of serious efforts and work that were initiated in 2001 by Al Nayzak Organization for Supportive Education and Scientific Innovation, which resulted in a number of quality projects. During the past five years, the concept of scientific innovation and entrepreneurship has become a window of opportunity for Palestinian youth to launch their efforts in the business market, initiating a process of creating job opportunities. Furthermore, a number of Palestinian organisations were established by gathering money from capital donors and setting the standard of caring for scientifically and intellectually talented Palestinian youth. Such standards reached the highest level with the PA’s decision to establish the Higher Council for Innovation and Creativity in September 2012.
It is not just by chance that we, as Palestinians, find ourselves to be the people most interested in talent in the region. Regardless of the absence of a holistic system to incubate it, there has been a true effort to honour this talent. Thankfully, time has diminished the stereotype of academic education being the only tool to secure a job, which typically revolved around three majors:  medicine, engineering, and law. On the other hand, Palestine has witnessed a strong and growing interest in unique and quality specialisations that are based on will and talent. This approach is what needs to be developed in our Palestinian society in order to transform it from a society of names and titles to a society thriving on knowledge and talent.
Talent should be accompanied by practice and constant training and knowledge, after which accomplishment will follow. Every day at Al Nayzak, we welcome a handful of parents at our offices in Jerusalem, Ramallah, and Gaza who believe that their children are talented. Parents then have the option to include their children in the Talented Students Incubators programme, the Young Researcher programme, or other scientific talent-fostering programmes managed by the organisation. In most cases, the parents know that we assess their children’s scientific abilities and talent. However, one question remains: Who is willing to pay the price of investing in talent, and at what expense? Here we are not addressing a financial question but rather a question of principle. Would parents accept the fact that their children would not receive the highest grades in schools that follow the traditional memorisation system? Would they accept that their child receive a lower grade than the neighbour’s child who is in the same class? Would they do such a thing simply for the sake of growing their child’s talent in electronics, physics, arts, or other fields? Would a mother agree to announce to the mothers of other children in her child’s class that her child is not ranked in the top ten in school but that the child is the first in his/her violin class? The answer is most likely no.
It is no secret that our society and prevailing culture like to brag about our youngsters’ talent while they are still young. But once this subject starts to affect the traditional professional path, the majority of the community retreats to investing in the traditional path at the expense of investing in talent, since this is what the people are accustomed to do.
In our special case, the Palestinian people are still humbly competing with their unique ideas, but nevertheless, they are renowned for their outstanding capacities despite living under constant closure due to the occupation, a shortage of resources, “neither war nor peace” conditions, and an unclear political vision in terms of upbringing for excellence. In addition to the conflicting interests of the traditional business market, pioneering ideas that call for change and entry into the world of entrepreneurship are based on know-how, informatics, and modern trade and industrial systems. The best example would be the success of Ahmad Ramahi, a young Palestinian innovator from Salfit, in the northeastern part of Palestine, who started as a participant in 2010 at Al Nayzak’s “Made in Palestine” programme which supports innovators. He quickly excelled and won awards at the national and regional levels where he also participated in the Stars of Science TV programme on MBC4 – an initiative of the Qatar Foundation.
I remember when Ahmad Ramahi was accepted into the Stars of Science programme. He entered my office and his mind was filled with doubts and questions. He said: “In order to participate in the programme in Doha, I have to quit a stable job at the university. I have to change my life, leave the country, and stay without a salary. I can afford all this but what will I tell my mother? How will she accept the idea of my giving up my position as a university lecturer to be an inventor on TV?”
Ahmad didn’t really advance on the show and was eliminated in unusual circumstances by the Arab jury even after his success in solving the majority of the complicated engineering problems, according to the jury itself. However, once the show ended, he moved on, not only because he is an excellent engineer, but because of his passion and determination to succeed. Why didn’t the Arab committee want to keep him in the programme despite his excellence in terms of ideas and techniques? It may be due to the aforementioned Palestinian conditions that do not facilitate success when all interests and selection criteria overlap and collide at the same time. At this point, talent rests aside.
Ahmad Ramahi, and his business partner Hassan Jaddeh, with the support of Al Nayzak, were able to develop the innovative idea of transforming every white surface into an interactive educational platform into an industrial business named Concepts Co. At the company, both individuals then started to produce and market an idea that turned into a product in the local and Arabic markets. The company also works on innovative technological solutions in the field of IT and cyberspace. Ahmad’s mother was able to overcome the momentary crisis of her son’s not following the traditional path and also started to like the idea of his being an entrepreneur and businessman instead of a university professor. This, however, might not appeal much to the surrounding community.
In our Palestinian and Arabic reality, everyone is racing to honour innovation and entrepreneurship. We all attempt to reap the fruits of a non-existing tree. We applaud and honour talented people, building on previous stereotypes that individuals who are born with talent are able to bypass the stage of latency and jump ahead into the stage of generating ideas and finding solutions all on their own. But to plant the tree of sustained systematic innovation, we have to start from an early age, which can only be done through education.
I believe that we should commit to reforming the current education system – school or higher education – which is fully incapable of producing talented people given that our society believes only in the traditional life path: school, tawjihi, academic education, job, building an apartment on top of the family house, marriage, children, forcing the children through the same path, and so on. Therefore, we find that all our local innovations, which start in the fields of science and technology, begin to disappear after the recognition ceremony.
The real Arabic and Palestinian challenge lies in founding a scientific community that is able to grow, a society that looks ahead and is not afraid of confrontation and does not enjoy being only a consumer of technology, but rather a society that truly wishes to contribute to the futuristic scientific and technological civilisation.
This is the challenge. And in order to build a productive, knowledge-based society, we need more than ever to change the prevailing educational system from that of memorisation and indoctrination, for knowledge should no longer be trapped in school text books. We are able, nowadays, to easily access the information we seek whether it be through the Internet or smart phones. The real questions that remain are: How do we interact with this knowledge? And how do we employ such accumulated information, skills, and analytical abilities that achieve deep and ultimate understanding of the support and implementation of innovation that we store as knowledge capital? The magic of talent may start with giving up fear, because undoubtedly, terrified people cannot innovate.

Aref Husseini is an electronics engineer, physicist, and novelist. He is the founder and general manager of Al-Nayzak Organization for Scientific Innovation. In 2011, he was elected vice chairman of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)-Palestine Subsection.

aref.husseini@gmail.com

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