Palestinian resistance to Israeli hegemony is transforming significantly. In this Focus On, Al-Shabaka’s policy analysts examine the trajectory of contemporary Palestinian resistance. They focus on ongoing challenges, including the censorship of anti-Zionist activists, and the persecution of Palestinians by Palestinian security forces. They emphasize which actors and tactics should be harnessed as the resistance continues to grow and confront oppression.

The latest Palestinian uprising against Israeli settler-colonial rule has been dubbed the “Unity Intifada.” It has brought Palestinians across colonized Palestine in unprecedented national unity around a shared struggle for liberation from ethnic cleansing, fragmentation, and settler colonization. Al-Shabaka’s Senior Analyst, Yara Hawari, examines the historical and contemporary implications of the Unity Intifada, and offers critical insight into how we must understand this unity.  

People-to-People (P2P) funded-projects are being revived in the US and Europe, threatening to undermine international law and Palestinians’ rights. Al-Shabaka’s Senior Analyst, Yara Hawari, examines the troubling implications of P2P initiatives and offers recommendations for how policymakers can counter them in order to bring about a just peace that holds Israel accountable for its violations of Palestinians’ rights.

Palestinian political leadership is in a state of crisis. How did this come to be and what does the future hold? In this Focus On, we look back on several pieces authored by Al-Shabaka analysts which explore issues of Palestinian leadership in the past and present, and which propose concrete possibilities for future models that specifically engage youth.  

The Israeli state has actively sought to destroy Palestinian Jerusalem since its creation in 1948. Al-Shabaka’s Senior Palestine Policy Fellow, Yara Hawari, examines the July 2020 attacks on three Palestinian cultural institutions in East Jerusalem as part of the Israeli regime’s systematic destruction of the city’s Palestinian identity. She offers policy recommendations for protecting Jerusalem’s Palestinian cultural and political institutions.

At a time of paralysis due to the pandemic and multiple Israeli violations of Palestinian rights, it is more urgent than ever for the Palestinian people to move beyond the sterile vision of a “feasible” future. Al-Shabaka Senior Policy Fellow Yara Hawari reviews efforts to break through imposed limits and envision a revolutionary consensus.

Netanyahu has pledged to begin annexing parts of the West Bank as soon as next month. What are the implications of such a move, and what can be learned from Israel’s previous annexations of Jerusalem and the Golan Heights? In this policy lab, Yara Hawari and Rania Muhareb join host Nur Arafeh to weigh in…

As Israel and the US fast-track President Donald Trump’s vision of “peace”, i.e. the illegal annexation of occupied Palestinian territory, European countries ponder ways to uphold the rule of law. In this Policy Memo Al-Shabaka’s Yara Hawari provides ideas on how they can – with a push from the Palestine solidarity movement. 

The West Bank and Gaza Strip are confronting COVID-19 from a reality of Israeli military occupation. Al-Shabaka Senior Palestine Policy Fellow Yara Hawari analyzes the severe challenges this presents to Palestinians, Israel’s political manipulation of the virus, and the international community’s normalizing response – and how it should change.  

Settler colonial projects such as Israel seek to control perceptions of reality in order to bind Indigenous and colonized people in a seemingly perpetual state of being. Imagining a future beyond this state is thus a rebellious and radical act. Al-Shabaka’s Yara Hawari explores the need for Palestinian imaginings of radical futures and highlights current examples of such work.