GAZA CITY- Israel's 22-day war on Gaza have left young men like Ahmed and Mohammed with just one dream -- get out of the Strip as fast as they can.
The 20-year-olds marooned on the devastated coastal strip sandwiched between Egypt and Israel say they just cannot imagine their futures in Gaza.
"We want to leave, as soon as we can get out of Gaza," says Mohammed.
He would happily go to find his sister in Sweden, but the tall and thin young student of architecture has eyes for any foreign destination.
Ahmed, sporting a three-day beard and tousled hair, would like to go to Syria to join his mother.
Mohammed is convinced that despite the fact that Hamas fought Israel in the 22-day war, it's the resistance movement that is playing into Israeli hands and not Fatah, which runs the Palestinian Authority in the occupied West Bank.
"Israelis prefer those who say 'no' because that gives them an excuse to come and crush us.
"Israel does not like people who say 'yes' like (Mahmud) Abbas," the beleaguered Palestinian president and Fatah leader.
However, neither Abbas nor the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat had gained back Palestinian rights or even peace despite saying 'yes' to Israel most of the time and despite their recognition of the Jewish State.
Palestinians continue to suffer under Israeli occupation in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
The occupied West Bank is no safe haven as Israel had killed scores of Palestinians there during 2008, despite the absence of rocket fire and Hamas resistance, although it is a significant drop from the 2002 figure when the Israeli military had killed more than 600 West Bank Palestinians.
Reports also show that the number of Palestinian civilians abducted by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank since the beginning of 2008 had mounted to 2,184.
"Anyway we are not strong enough to win," against the Israelis, says Ahmed.
They talk of peace but lack conviction. In their experience, a Middle East settlement will require a miracle.
And they certainly do not expect that new US President Barack Obama will be able to change the future for Palestinians living in the shadow of Israel and its military might.
Obama looks like being "a friend of the Jews" like previous US presidents, they say.
The pair live in a south Gaza City district spared by Israeli tanks.
"If they had come to our place we would have fought against them," Ahmed says, "even though we don't have any guns."
They study architecture at the University of Palestine which opened after the evacuation of the illegal Jewish colony of Netzarim in 2005, as Israel pulled out of the strip for what was supposed to have been the last time.
But classes have been suspended because their faculty was hit by the bombs.
Much of the war they spent following on television events that were happening just a few miles (kilometres) away.
"For the first 16 days of the war, we had no electricity in our house, after that it was every other day. When it's like that you don't go out at night, you just try to sleep," says Mohammed.
He's been trying to learn to play the guitar and says he loves music -- anything from Britney Spears and Christine Aguilea to Arab legend Fayruz, Egypt's Amr Diab and a list of well-known reciters of the Koran, the Muslim holy book.
Ahmed spends his spare time playing football. But the pitch was bombed by the Israelis.
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