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After a year of enduring relentless violence and devastation, Palestinians stand at a pivotal moment. In this commentary, Yara Hawari reflects on the immense losses for the Palestinian people since October 2023 and the emerging opportunities to work towards a future free of settler colonial oppression. Hawari argues that now is the time for the movement to shift from a reactive stance to one that defines its own priorities. As part of this transition, she outlines three necessary steps: moving beyond a reliance on international law, deepening connections in the Global South, and dedicating resources to exploring radical visions of a liberated future.
In this commentary, Samer Alatout offers key insights into this new wave of student mobilization. He details student demands and places them within the historical legacy of US student organizing. He also examines the relationship between university administrators, students, and faculty, and finds hope in the kinship emerging between the latter two groups at this critical moment.
On May 17, 2024, the US began operating a temporary floating pier off the coast of Gaza. Since the project’s announcement, many have expressed skepticism towards the pier’s effectiveness and deep concern regarding the US’s long-term plans and the pier’s potential role in serving Israeli objectives.
This commentary examines the pier’s operations and unpacks the many incentives for its development by key geopolitical players. It positions the pier within Israel’s longer-term strategy for Palestine, using the structure as a window into understanding the regime’s broader regional aims. Temporary or not, this commentary contends that the pier must not be viewed as merely a short-term humanitarian effort, but also as a symbol of the US and Israel’s continued imperial and colonial endeavors.
Since the beginning of the Zionist project in Palestine, large efforts have been exerted to paint all resistance to its colonial endeavors as irrational and at odds with progress and modernity. This deliberately manufactured dichotomy between the prosperous and civilized Settler and the regressive and rejectionist Arab standing in the way of progress set the tone for developments between Palestinians and Zionist settlers for decades to come. In this commentary, Al-Shabaka analyst Fathi Nimer explores the nascence of this trope, unpacking its weaponization to deny Palestinians their fundamental rights and demonize their collective aspirations for sovereignty.
In this commentary, Omar Shaban offers an entry point to a Palestinian dialogue on what may follow a ceasefire. He does so by delving into the current non-Palestinian “day after” discourse, then by identifying the ways in which reconstruction today is distinct from past efforts, and finally by putting forth a possible approach to begin to embark on rebuilding Gaza.
Mainstream media coverage of the genocide in Gaza throughout the West has highlighted not only deep biases in favor of the Israeli regime, but also the ease in which Palestinians are dehumanized. In this commentary, Yara Hawari details Israel’s strategy to strip Palestinians of their humanity in the public realm, as well as the role of Western media in advancing Israel’s aims. She reveals consistent patterns of journalistic malpractice since October 7, 2023, and concludes that the Western outlets are inescapably complicit in the Israeli regime’s genocide against the Palestinian people of Gaza.
The Israeli regime is currently committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, aiming to eliminate the Indigenous community through slaughter, starvation, and mass expulsion. While devastating, it is imperative to recognize that this practice is not new. Rather, it is part of Israel’s decades-long Zionist colonial project. In this commentary, guest author Jamal Nabulsi outlines three defining features of Zionist settler colonialism: its structural nature, strategy of elimination, and use of fragmentation. It is through these tactics, Nabulsi argues, that the Zionist project seeks to ultimately extinguish Palestinian Indigenous sovereignty.
Hamas’s surprise offensive on October 7th, 2023, dealt the most lethal blow to the Israeli military and public since the establishment of the state in 1948. In retaliation, Israel launched the most extensive military assault on Gaza in its history, destroying large swathes of the territory and killing more than 14,000 Palestinians, over a third of whom were children.
Consensus-building can be a long and challenging process that requires all stakeholders involved to be committed to reaching an agreement. In the case of the Palestinian liberation project, achieving consensus among the forcibly fragmented Palestinian people is both particularly difficult and of critical importance in order to create a united national movement.
The Palestinian Authority’s (PA) budget disproportionately relies on clearance revenues — import taxes collected by Israel on its behalf — that the Israeli regime regularly withholds as political blackmail. As a result, Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza suffer severe economic consequences.
Leadership is a focal point for Palestinians in Gaza who have been living through the division in Palestinian politics since 2007. Palestinian leaders in Fatah and Hamas continue to operate in tandem with the Israeli settler-colonial project to fragment the Palestinian polity, leaving Palestinians in Gaza and elsewhere in colonized Palestine little hope for liberation through the political establishment.
Media & Outreach
This week on Babel, Jon Alterman speaks with Amjad Iraqi, a senior editor at +972 Magazine and an associate fellow with Chatham House. He is also affiliated with Al-Shabaka, an online Palestinian policy network. Together, they discuss how Palestinian citizens of Israel have been experiencing the Gaza war, and the future of Palestinian communities in Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank.
Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar and Ismail Haniyeh were killed by Israel, leaving the group to debate a successor. And, as Israel’s war on Gaza continues, questions remain about what lies ahead for Gaza’s leadership and its people.
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