Zaid Shuaibi
Al-Shabaka Policy Member Zaid Shuaibi is the Arab World and Palestine Coordinator for the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI). He holds an MA in International Politics from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), where his research focused on China and East Asia relations with Israel and its effect on the region, as well as a BA in Public Administration from Birzeit University. Zaid previously served as the BDS National Committee Outreach Officer in Palestine and the Arab World.
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.
Zachariah Sammour
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.
Yasser Salah
Al-Shabaka Member Yasser Salah is a lawyer and researcher with a master’s degree in democracy and human rights from Birzeit University. He has been a lawyer since 2004 as well as a legal consultant to Palestinian human rights organizations. Salah has worked with the Independent Commission for Human Rights since 2009. He served at the Palestinian Central Elections Commission, and took part with the Carter Center in monitoring Tunisian elections in 2011 and the Egyptian presidential elections in 2012. Salah is a trainer in the field of human rights, public freedoms and legislation.
Yara Hawari
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.
Will Youmans
Will Youmans is a writer and activist. He is a doctoral candidate at the University of Michigan and holds a degree from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law. He has written on Arab-American issues and US policy in the Middle East.
Thayer Hastings
Al-Shabaka Policy Member Thayer Hastings is a graduate student at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City where he is studying anthropology of the Arab world. He holds an M.A. degree from the Georgetown University Center for Contemporary Arab Studies. After completing a B.A. from the University of Washington in Seattle, he returned to Palestine, where he carried out research and advocacy in law and human rights. Thayer worked with Palestinian and international non-governmental organizations, including BADIL Resource Center and the American Friends Service Committee. His research and writing continue to be informed by a commitment to community-led initiatives and decolonizing methodologies.
Valentina Azarova
Valentina Azarova is an international legal academic and practitioner working at the intersection of power, law, and violence, with over 15 years of experience advising social and liberation movements, NGOs, international and inter-governmental organizations and governments, primarily in the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa. She holds a PhD in law from NUI Galway’s Irish Centre for Human Rights and currently teaches transnational lawyering and human rights practice at different universities and is also a Research Fellow at the Manchester International Law Centre, University of Manchester. Valentina’s current research concerns practices and processes reproduction of (ir)responsibility in/by international law, and the relation between social justice struggles, accountability practices and the law.
Victor Kattan
Victor Kattan is a Senior Research Fellow at the Middle East Institute at the National University of Singapore. He previously served as Al-Shabaka’s Program Director and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Law Faculty of the National University of Singapore. He is the author of From Coexistence to Conquest: International Law and the Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1891-1949 (London: Pluto Books, 2009) and The Palestine Question in International Law (London: British Institute of International and Comparative Law, 2008). He was a legal adviser to the Palestinian Negotiations Support Project from 2012-2013 and a Teaching Fellow at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) from 2008-2011 where he obtained his PhD in 2012. He worked for the British Institute of International and Comparative Law from 2006-2008, Arab Media Watch from 2004-2006, and the BADIL Resource Centre for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights from 2003-2004.
