Al-Shabaka Policy Member Joanna Springer is a researcher on development policy and governance reform in the Middle East. She has carried out research and worked for local organizations in Morocco, Qatar and the West Bank. Currently, Joanna is research advisor for a rule of law advancement project in the Arab Gulf. She holds a Master’s of Public Policy and Administration from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst with a focus in economic development.
From this author
A quarter of a century since the signing of the Oslo Accords, an independent and sovereign Palestinian state has become little more than a myth as Israel continues to expand its settler colonial project and military occupation. Oslo’s structure and framework are to blame for this reality, as the Accords were not a peace agreement but a security arrangement between colonizer and colonized.
Pope Francis has attracted attention for his support of causes the establishment ignores, including the rights of the Palestinian people. And yet the US Catholic Church lags behind other American churches. Al-Shabaka’s Grace Said and Joanna Springer take advantage of the Pope’s US trip to challenge his church to go further.
Technical solutions shorn of political context have contributed to a failed state in Palestine and harmed the collective Palestinian struggle for freedom, transforming the Palestinian Authority into an NGO-like body.
