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Who We Are

  • Staff
  • Program Advisors
  • Board
  • Editorial Committee

Staff

Nadim Bawalsa

Nadim Bawalsa is Al-Shabaka’s Commissioning Editor. He is a historian of modern Palestine and has written on the emergence of Palestinian diaspora communities across Latin America in the early twentieth century. His work appeared in the Jerusalem Quarterly, the Journal of Palestine Studies, and NACLA Report on the Americas. He earned a joint doctorate in History and Middle Eastern & Islamic Studies from New York University in 2017, and a Master’s in Arab Studies from Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies in 2010. In 2019-2020, he completed a PARC-NEH fellowship in Palestine related to his forthcoming book, Transnational Palestine: Migration and the Right of Return before 1948.  

Megan Driscoll

Megan Driscoll is Al-Shabaka’s Managing Director. She previously served as Knowledge & Development Manager, and has worked with the organization since 2015. Megan holds a master’s degree in Participation, Power, and Social Change from the University of Sussex’s Institute of Development Studies, where her research focused on the construction of Palestinian counter-discourses and decolonized research practices. From 2012 - 2016, she worked in the Occupied West Bank with various Palestinian NGOs in the fields of development and advocacy.

Mohammed Hamarsha

Mohammed Hamarsha is Al-Shabaka’s Communications Specialist. He is a journalist with extensive experience working for international news outlets and media organizations in various capacities, covering geopolitics across the Middle East and Latin America. His work and commentaries have appeared in Al-Jazeera, The BBC, Middle East Eye, teleSUR, and North American Congress in Latin America (NACLA) among others.

Yara Hawari

Yara Hawari is the Senior Analyst of Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network. She 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.

Laura Thomas

Laura Thomas is Al-Shabaka’s Development Manager. She is a development professional with a decade of experience working with Palestinian civil society. She has served as a fundraiser and grant manager, as well as a planning, monitoring and evaluation specialist. Laura holds a master’s degree in International Cooperation and Development from Bethlehem University in the West Bank and an undergraduate degree from the University of Chicago. 

Program Advisors

Alaa Tartir

Alaa Tartir is Program Advisor to Al-Shabaka. Tartir also serves as a research associate at the Centre on Conflict, Development, and Peacebuilding, and a visiting fellow at the Department of Anthropology and Sociology, The Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (IHEID), Geneva, Switzerland. Amongst other positions, Tartir was a post-doctoral fellow at The Geneva Centre for Security Policy (GCSP) from 2016-17, a visiting scholar and lecturer (2015) at Utrecht University’s Department of History and Art History, The Netherlands, and was, between 2010 and 2015, a researcher in international development studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), where he earned his PhD. Follow Tartir on Twitter: https://twitter.com/alaatartir and read his publications at www.alaatartir.com  

Board

Refqa Abu-Remaileh

Refqa Abu-Remaileh is professor of Modern Arabic Literature and Film at the Freie Universität Berlin’s Arabic Department, specializing in Palestinian literature and film. She is the Principal Investigator of the European Research Council (ERC) project “PalREAD – Country of Words: Reading and Reception of Palestinian Literature from 1948 to the Present” (2018-2023). She received her MSt in modern Middle Eastern Studies and DPhil in Oriental Studies from the University of Oxford (2004, 2010).

Mazen Arafat

Mazen Arafat serves as board treasurer. He has worked in various banking and investment management roles in London for two decades. He was previously involved in economic development projects in Palestine and continues to have research and policy interest in the subject. Mazen is a trustee of Friends of Birzeit University and a board member of Zaytoun, a British social enterprise company importing Palestinian products. He is also engaged with the work of Medical Aid for Palestinians. Mazen has long supported Al-Shabaka’s work and serves on its Development Committee. He holds a BA in Economics and an MPhil in Political Science.

Tareq Baconi

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.

Aline Batarseh

Aline Batarseh is a community organizer and development professional. She has extensive fundraising experience working with international and Palestinian non-profits aimed at advancing human rights, and approaches her work from an intersectional perspective. She has close ties with many civil society organizations in Palestine as well as in the United States, and frequently provides advice and support to help nurture their efforts.  Aline has a master’s degree in Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. She has long supported Al-Shabaka’s work and its commitment to bringing Palestinian voices, knowledge, and experience to policy analysis and strategy development. 

Zaha Hassan

Al-Shabaka Policy Member Zaha Hassan is a human rights lawyer and visiting fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Her research focuses on Palestine-Israel peace, the use of international legal mechanisms by political movements, and U.S. foreign policy in the region. She previously served as coordinator and senior legal advisor to the Palestinian negotiating team during Palestine’s bid for UN membership from 2010-2012. She received her J.D. from the University of California at Berkeley and an LLM in Transnational & International Law from Willamette University.


Honorary Board President

Nadia Hijab

Nadia Hijab is co-founder and honorary president of Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network. She served as Board President from 2010-2021 and as Executive Director between 2011 and March 2018. A writer, public speaker and media commentator, Hijab’s first book, Womanpower: The Arab Debate on Women at Work was published by Cambridge University Press and she co-authored Citizens Apart: A Portrait of Palestinians in Israel (I. B. Tauris). She was Editor-in-Chief of the London-based Middle East Magazine before serving at the United Nations in New York. She is a co-founder and former co-chair of the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights and now serves on its advisory board. She continues to serve Al-Shabaka in an advisory capacity and support its mission.


Editorial Committee

Photo of Amal Ahmad
Amal Ahmad

Amal Ahmad is a Palestinian economic researcher.

Nur Arafeh

Nur is pursuing her PhD in economic development at the University of Oxford.

Tareq Baconi

Tareq is the Israel/Palestine and Economics of Conflict Analyst at the International Crisis Group.

Cecilia Baeza

Cecilia is Lecturer at the Getulio Vargas Foundation in São Paulo, Brazil.

Muna Dajani

Muna is a Palestinian environmental researcher and activist from Jerusalem.

Tariq Dana

Tariq Dana is an assistant professor at the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies at the Doha Institute of Graduate Studies.

Jamil Hilal

Jamil is an independent Palestinian sociologist and writer.

Mimi Kirk

Mimi Kirk is Editorial Consultant at Al-Shabaka. She served as the organization’s commissioning editor and managing director from 2016 to 2020.

Munir Nuseibah

Munir is a human rights lawyer and academic based at Al-Quds University in Jerusalem.

Halla Shoaibi

Halla is Chairperson of the Law Department, Birzeit University.

Jaber Suleiman

Jaber is an independent researcher/consultant in refugee studies.

Alaa Tartir

Alaa, a Program Advisor to Al-Shabaka, is a research associate and visiting fellow at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva.

An independent, non-partisan, and non-profit organization whose mission is to educate and foster public debate on Palestinian human rights and self determination within the framework of international law. Al-Shabaka materials may be reproduced and circulated with due attribution to Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network. The opinions of individual members of Al-Shabaka’s policy network do not necessarily reflect the views of the organization as a whole.

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