Al-Shabaka policy analyst, Ibrahim Shikaki, is assistant professor of economics at Trinity College, Hartford, CT. He earned his PhD from the New School for Social Research (NSSR) in New York, and held teaching positions at NSSR, The International University College of Turin, Birzeit, and Al-Quds universities. He also held research positions at the Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute (MAS) in Ramallah and Diakonia’s IHL Research Center in East Jerusalem. His recent writings include an upcoming chapter on the political economy of dependency and class formation in Palestine, and a brief on the economic aspects of Kushner’s Bahrain Plan.
From this author
The arrival of new digital technologies over the past decade has had critical implications for Palestinian activism. On the one hand, these developments have reinvigorated the Palestinian cause. Indeed, social media platforms have facilitated new channels and modes of social organization, helping Palestinians counter their geographic fragmentation under Israeli apartheid.
The recent cryptocurrency crash raises doubts about its viability as an alternative to standard currencies. But are there aspects of the global phenomenon that are still useful for Palestinian economic and political resistance? Al-Shabaka policy analysts Tariq Dana and Ibrahim Shikaki debate the potential of digital and cryptocurrencies and outline technological opportunities for the Palestinian economy.
As the Palestinian general elections fast approach, many are wondering whether new leadership would create opportunities for self-determined Palestinian economic development.
The Israeli occupation has crippled Palestinian productive sectors, leading to the dominance of internal trade in the Palestinian economy. Al-Shabaka policy analyst, Ibrahim Shikaki, examines how these structural distortions developed as a result of Israel’s oppressive economic policies since it occupied Palestine in 1967. He offers recommendations to the international community and aid agencies for how to support Palestinian economic self-determination.
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.
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.
