Focus On: Palestinian Political Leadership

Marwa is a Palestinian writer, researcher and policy analyst based in Berlin. She leads Access Now’s work on digital rights in the Middle East and North Africa region as the MENA Policy Manager. She is also an advisory board member of the Palestinian digital rights organization 7amleh. Previously, she worked as the MENA Regional Advisor for Transparency International Secretariat. Marwa was a Fulbright scholar to the US, and holds an MA in International Relations from Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University. She holds a second MA in Development and Governance from University of Duisburg-Essen.

Al-Shabaka Policy Member Zachariah Sammour completed his undergraduate studies in law at the London School of Economics in 2012 and received his master’s degree from Oxford University in 2013. He is particularly interested in international law, constitutional law, and constitutional theory.

Yara Hawari is Al-Shabaka’s co-director. She previously served as the Palestine policy fellow and senior analyst. Yara completed her PhD in Middle East Politics at the University of Exeter, where she taught various undergraduate courses and continues to be an honorary research fellow. In addition to her academic work, which focused on indigenous studies and oral history, she is a frequent political commentator writing for various media outlets including The Guardian, Foreign Policy, and Al Jazeera English.

Tareq Baconi serves as the president of the board of Al-Shabaka. He was Al-Shabaka’s US Policy Fellow from 2016 – 2017. Tareq is the former senior analyst for Israel/Palestine and Economics of Conflict at the International Crisis Group, based in Ramallah, and the author of Hamas Contained: The Rise and Pacification of Palestinian Resistance (Stanford University Press, 2018). Tareq’s writing has appeared in the London Review of Books, the New York Review of Books, the Washington Post, among others, and he is a frequent commentator in regional and international media. He is the book review editor for the Journal of Palestine Studies.

Samah Sabawi is a political commentator, author and playwright. She is a member of the board of directors for the National Council on Canada Arab Relations (NCCAR). Sabawi wrote and produced Cries from the Land (Canada 2003), Three Wishes (Canada 2008) andTales of a City by the Sea (Palestine & Australia 2014).  Her past work includes being public advocate for Australians for Palestine, Executive Director for the National Council on Canada Arab Relations (NCCAR) and Subject Matter Expert (SME) for the Canadian Foreign Service Institute’s Centre for Intercultural Learning.

Noura Erakat is a human rights attorney and Professor in the Department of Africana Studies and the Program in Criminal Justice at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. Her research focuses on human rights law, humanitarian law, refugee law, and critical race theory, with a particular focus on Palestine. She is the author of Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine (Stanford University Press, 2019), a co-founding editor of Jadaliyya, and an editorial committee member for the Journal of Palestine Studies. She holds a JD from UC Berkeley and an LLM in National Security from Georgetown University Law Center.

Al-Shabaka Policy Member Loubna Qutami is a Presidents Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. She has a PhD from the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Riverside. Qutami is also the former Executive Director of the Arab Cultural and Community Center (ACCC) in San Francisco as well as a founder, member, and the former International General Coordinator for the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM). 

Jamil Hilal is an independent Palestinian sociologist and writer, and has published many books and numerous articles on Palestinian society, the Arab-Israeli Conflict, and Middle East issues.  Hilal has held, and holds, associate senior research fellowship at a number of Palestinian research institutions.  His recent publications include works on poverty, Palestinian political parties, and the political system after Oslo.  He edited Where Now for Palestine: The Demise of the Two-State Solution (Z Books, 2007), and with Ilan Pappe edited Across the Wall (I.B. Tauris, 2010).

Haidar Eid is a literary scholar and Associate Professor at Al-Aqsa University in Gaza, currently based in Johannesburg as a research associate at the Centre for Asian Studies in Africa at the University of Pretoria. He holds a PhD from Rand Afrikaans University and has published widely in postcolonial literature and cultural studies. His most recent book, Decolonizing the Palestinian Mind (2023), draws on Edward Said, Frantz Fanon, and Ghassan Kanafani to examine liberation and Palestinian cultural identity. He is also the author of Worlding Postmodernism and Countering the Palestinian Nakba: One State for All.

Al-Shabaka Policy Member Fadi Quran is a Senior Campaigner at Avaaz and a Popular Struggle community organizer. He previously served as UN Advocacy Officer with Al-Haq’s legal research and advocacy unit. Apart from his work in advocacy and international law, Fadi is also an entrepreneur in the alternative energy field, where he has founded two companies bringing wind and solar energy to Palestine and other countries in the region. Fadi holds degrees in Physics and International Relations from Stanford University.

Dana El Kurd is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Richmond and a senior nonresident fellow at the Arab Center Washington. She specializes in Palestinian and Arab politics, with a focus on mobilization, public opinion, and international intervention. Her book Polarized and Demobilized: Legacies of Authoritarianism in Palestine was published by Oxford University Press in 2020. Her work has appeared in academic journals including Global Studies Quarterly and Democratization, as well as in Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, and the Financial Times.

Ali Abdel-Wahab is a data analyst and policy researcher with over 8 years of experience in monitoring, evaluation, accountability, and learning (MEAL) in the humanitarian sector. He holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science and applies computational social science and political economy frameworks to his research on Palestinian governance, digital domination, and reconstruction agendas. Ali has authored over 32 policy papers and reports, including work cited in the UN Special Rapporteur’s 2025 report on freedom of expression.