Israel, Hamas Escape U.N.’s List of Shame on Attacks on Children
Nadia Hijab, executive director of Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network, told IPS that Ban Ki-moon clearly succumbed to U.S. and Israeli pressure by not naming Israel or Hamas in the so-called “List of Shame” despite urging by rights groups such as Human Rights Watch.
UK student union pro-BDS vote causes major stir in Israel
Alaa Tartir, programme director at Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network, said what might appear to be a sudden Israeli push back is, in fact, a strategy that started with the first intifada when Palestinians called for Israeli boycotts. The country has dedicated budgets and teams to combatting BDS for years because officials believe it poses a serious threat, Tartir said.
Tensions soar in West Bank refugee camp
The role of the Palestinian security forces is rooted in the Oslo Accords of 1993, and a strengthened security apparatus has continually emerged in peace negotiations as a key component for future Palestinian self-determination, Alaa Tartir, an analyst with al-Shabaka – The Palestinian Policy Network, told Al Jazeera.
Wither the Palestinian Authority?
According to Alaa Tartir, program director for Palestinian policy network Al-Shabaka, the question of dissolving the PA is irrelevant. The focus should be more about reconstructing the framework and obligations of the authority to its constituents, a step beyond reformation.
Naseer Aruri, who built Palestinian solidarity movement in US, to be memorialized this Sunday
Nadia Hijab wrote about starting the US Campaign to End the Occupation in 2001 with Aruri as an adviser. Her obit at Palestine Chronicle of a teacher and a friend began: There are those whose life and work touch the lives of tens of thousands, for decades. Naseer Aruri was one such man.
It’s Increasingly Unsafe to Farm or Fish in Gaza
According to Alaa Tartir of Al-Shabaka, an independent Palestinian research group, Israel’s seizure of agricultural lands via the buffer zone as well as its armed forces’ attacks on farmers and fishermen are not simple matters of border-making or random acts of violence. Rather, he told The Electronic Intifada, such measures are part of a campaign of economic warfare.
Teachers forced to equip schools at own expense as austerity bites West Bank
Alaa Tartir explains that the 1993 Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization “created an inherently dependent and fragile Palestinian ‘authority.’” After years of building up its public sector, the PA today has around 150,000 public servants, Tartir told The Electronic Intifada. “When Israel decides to withhold Palestinian taxes or when the PA passes through a financial crisis — which is recurrent — those monthly salaries get majorly delayed or paid in installments over months,” he said. “When Israel withholds taxes it does indeed commit another form of ‘collective punishment’ because it does not only punish the civil servants but also their families [and] we are talking about hundreds of thousands of people that are affected,” Tartir continued. Yet, the PA’s neoliberal economic policies have only worsened the situation. A Western-backed agenda “entrenched the structural deficiencies in the Palestinian economy and created further distortion,” said Tartir. “It increased inequalities, poverty and unemployment. It created a status of individual wealth for some but national poverty for all.”
Palestinians Set to Seek Redress in a World Court
Nadia Hijab on the PLO/Palestine joining the International Criminal Court: “They have to take some meaningful steps to recover anything of their really shredded credibility … That fig leaf of action is growing steadily more tattered. They keep saying it’s a new paradigm and they want to use international tools, but now they have actually been put on the spot.”
The Palestinians’ Desperation Move
Mahmoud Abbas’ team signing papers on New Year’s Eve to join the International Criminal Court was not surprising. Nadia Hijab is quoted in the day’s top Times editorial saying, “They have to take some meaningful steps to recover anything of their really shredded credibility.”
