A few other streets are also named after Algerian figures. There is Ben Bella street, after the first president of Algeria and a famous resistance leader. There is also the Bou Haired street, after Jamila Bou Haired, a popular symbol of resistance, a heroine tortured in French jails before independence who became famous throughout the Arab world mainly because of an Egyptian movie about her life. I do not recall other streets named after Algerian figures after 1981 or 1982. The heroism associated with Algeria began gradually to fade away, and then very quickly, within a decade or so, heroism turned into horror.
Analogies can always mislead, but there is enough there to be concerned about, and perhaps to fear.
Or so is political opinion among Palestinians inclined to think. What appears particularly troubling in the Algerian case, especially for those looking at it from a distance, is the lack of clarity, the incomprehensibility, of the wanton, seemingly irrational but brutal violence directed mainly at civilians. Some opaque part of Algerian history must have unleashed such a dark and malevolent vortex. No doubt the answers to such questions will help us understand what has been happening in Algeria during the last few years. Beyond the immediate questions, one has to look at Algeria's past and the shadow it casts on the present, and the development of Algeria as a society.