Pubs with elements template - 11

Introduction

For two years, Israel has inflicted mass starvation, staggering death tolls, and relentless destruction on Gaza and its inhabitants. International efforts to recognize Israeli war crimes and halt the eradication of the Palestinian people continue to lag and fall short. On September 16, 2025, the UN Commission of Inquiry confirmed what Palestinians have identified since the outset: Israel is committing genocide. On September 29, US President Donald Trump unveiled a proposal that promises a ceasefire but subordinates Palestinians in Gaza to external governance, denies them self-determination, and entrenches Israeli control over the land. Framed as a peace initiative, the plan is in fact an attempt by the US to shield the Israeli regime from accountability, exemplifying Western complicity in the colonization of Palestine and the extermination of its people. In this context, Hamas’s agreement to release all Israeli captives signals its commitment to ending the ongoing violence, while simultaneously shifting the onus onto the Israeli regime and the Trump administration to clarify and operationalize their commitments to the ceasefire process.

This Focus On gathers Al-Shabaka’s analyses from the past year, offering urgent context to understand the genocide and its regional impact. It traces the Israeli regime’s expansionist campaign across Gaza, the West Bank, and the wider region, exposing Western complicity not only in enabling its crimes but also in protecting it from justice. At the same time, it highlights initiatives that resist Israeli impunity while advancing accountability and genuine liberation.

Gaza Under Genocide

Our publications provide evidence of the genocidal character of Israel’s assault on Gaza since October 7, 2023, exposing the devastation and war crimes inflicted on Palestinians. They show that the destruction of infrastructure, the dismantling of Palestinian social and cultural life, and mass displacement are not incidental byproducts of war but central features of a settler-colonial project that has unfolded over decades. They underscore the futility of short-lived ceasefires that entrench occupation, and reveal how the Israeli regime has weaponized humanitarian aid by turning it into an instrument of death rather than relief. At the same time, our analysts emphasize the urgent need to dismantle narratives that normalize forced displacement and ethnic cleansing.

Erasure Across and Beyond Palestine

The Israeli regime’s genocidal policies against Palestinians extend beyond Gaza, encompassing all of Palestine and extending across its borders. The following analyses expose how the settler-colonial project rests on a logic of erasure, operating through the replacement of the Palestinian workforce and the dismantling of Indigenous social, economic, and political structures. They also demonstrate how the colonial regime targets Palestinian refugee camps as enduring sites of resistance, seeking to suppress organizing and undermine the right of return across all geographies.

Israeli Impunity and Regional Expansion

Our analysts show how Israeli impunity—upheld by the West and normalized by Arab regimes—fuels its project of Palestinian annihilation and regional aggression. In the following contributions, they demonstrate how, under the guise of regional security, the Israeli regime launched assaults in Syria and Iran to deflect attention from its genocidal campaign in Gaza while consolidating dominance across the Middle East. They show how Western powers shield Israel from accountability, fail to take real action to stop its war crimes, and provide media cover that recasts Israeli aggression as self-defense, enabling it to carry out genocide with impunity.

Fighting Back and Global Realignments

The following analyses situate Israel’s genocidal campaign within a shifting global order. They highlight how resistance to Israeli crimes has unfolded on multiple fronts, from grassroots mobilization to the pursuit of international legal action by the Hague Group. 

Article - Introducing Al-Shabaka, The Palestinian Policy Network

Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network

Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network is an independent, non-partisan, and non-profit organization whose mission is to convene a multidisciplinary, global network of Palestinian analysts to produce critical policy analysis and collectively imagine a new policymaking paradigm for Palestine and Palestinians worldwide.

More From This Author
In this article
Download PDF
View PDF

Latest Analysis

Explore All Analysis
Policy Brief
 Politics

Insulation Not Isolation: Israel’s Super-Sparta War Economy

As the US and Israel escalate their assault on Iran, the Israeli regime has been constructing a war economy to sustain prolonged military campaigns while evading accountability. In September 2025, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged Israelis to transform the country into a “Super Sparta” of the Middle East—more militarized, economically self-reliant, and capable of sustaining protracted conflict despite mounting external pressure. This policy brief argues that this rhetoric reflects an emerging doctrine: a political-economic project structured around permanent national mobilization, preventative warfare, and accelerated defense-industrial expansion. Yet the Israeli regime’s shift toward self-reliance is not producing full autarky. Instead, the war economy is consolidating into a hybrid model that combines domestic substitution in critical defense sectors with deeper integration into transnational supply networks, thereby dispersing sanctions risk. This configuration blunts the impact of conventional accountability tools, such as fragmented or weakly enforced arms embargoes. As a result, effective international responses must move beyond traditional sanctions frameworks and instead target the material infrastructure and dependency nodes that sustain Israel’s war economy.
Ahmed Alqarout· Mar 11, 2026
Policy Lab
 Politics

After Gaza’s Genocide: What World Order?

Noura Erakat and Jake Romm joined us for a policy lab episode on how Gaza helped shatter the old status quo and what that break reveals about the world being built in its wake.
Al-Shabaka Nour Joudah
Al-Shabaka Tariq Kenney-Shawa
Noura Erakat,Tariq Kenney-Shawa· Feb 23, 2026
Roundtable
 Civil Society

Palestine and the Shrinking Space for Dissent in the UK

On November 4, 2025, the UK government tabled an amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill to curtail protest rights under the pretext of “cumulative disruption.” The revised Bill is now in the House of Lords Committee, where it is scrutinized before advancing toward final approval. The amendment signals a profound shift in how the state regulates public protest. While the government presents the Bill as a neutral public order measure, it emerges directly from sustained national demonstrations for Palestinian rights and introduces new legal concepts that threaten long-established democratic freedoms. This roundtable examines the Bill’s political drivers, legal architecture, and wider implications for social movements and civil liberties in the UK. It shows that the amendment is not simply a public order measure; it is a coordinated political and legal project to narrow the space for dissent in the UK. While Palestinian solidarity is the immediate target of the crackdown on freedom of assembly, the roundtable argues that the consequences will reverberate across labor organizing, racial justice, climate activism, and broader democratic participation.
Al-Shabaka Zena Agha
Al-Shabaka Salma Karmi-Ayyoub
Zena Agha,Salma Karmi-Ayyoub,Celie Hanson + More· Feb 16, 2026

We’re building a network 
for liberation.

As the only global Palestinian think tank, we’re working hard to respond to rapid developments affecting Palestinians, while remaining committed to shedding light on issues that may otherwise be overlooked.

Meet Our Policy Network & Contributors