Al-Shabaka Policy Member Basem Ezbidi currently teaches at the Honors Program and the Department of International Affairs at Qatar University. He previously worked at Birzeit University as part of the department of Political Science and the Master program of Democracy and Human Rights. Ezbidi holds a Ph.D. in political theory from the University of Cincinnati in the United States. He has written on Hamas, state-building, and the West and the Moslem World. Among his publications, The Muslim World and the West – A Muslim Perspective; Coauthor of “Palestinian National Authority and the Future of State Formation”, and ‘Hamas and Palestinian Statehood’; Co-editor of “Popular Protest In The New Middle East: Islamism and Post-Islamist Politics”.
From this author
A Palestinian leadership vacuum looms due to the ill health of the secretary general of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Saeb Erekat, and the frailty of the Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas, who also heads the PLO and its main constituent party Fatah.
The failure to conduct local elections in the occupied territories and the Fatah conference, which largely reaffirmed a moribund status quo, are the latest examples of stymied Palestinian democracy. Al-Shabaka analysts examine the notion of democracy under military occupation, the factors constraining it, and the form that makes sense for the Palestinian people.
