Have Arab states abandoned the Palestinian people?
In this policy lab, Al-Shabaka analysts Tareq Baconi and Ibrahim Fraihat weigh in on the historical understanding of normalization, implications of the UAE-Israel agreement and other normalization developments across the region, and ways forward for Palestinians in light of these changing dynamics.
Tareq Baconi is a Palestinian writer, scholar, and activist. He previously served as Al-Shabaka’s US policy fellow and later as president of the board of directors. His work has appeared in The New York Times and The Baffler, among others. He also contributes essays to The New York Review of Books and the London Review of Books. He is the author of What Now: On Palestine, Freedom, and Our Global Future (2026), Hamas Contained: A History of Palestinian Resistance (2018), which was shortlisted for the Palestine Book Award, and Fire in Every Direction: A Memoir (2025).
Ibrahim Fraihat is Associate Professor of International Conflict Resolution at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies and a non-resident fellow at Deakin University’s Middle East Studies Forum in Australia. He previously served as Senior Foreign Policy Fellow at the Brookings Institution and taught conflict resolution at Georgetown University and George Washington University. His recent books include Conflict Mediation in the Arab World (Syracuse University Press, 2023), Rebel Governance in the Middle East (Palgrave, 2023), Iran and Saudi Arabia: Taming a Chaotic Conflict (Edinburgh University Press, 2020), and Unfinished Revolutions: Yemen, Libya, and Tunisia after the Arab Spring (Yale University Press, 2016). He holds a doctorate in conflict analysis and resolution from George Mason University and is the recipient of that university’s Distinguished Alumni Award (2014).
