Predictions: What will shape the Middle East in 2015?
“You can be sure sovereignty won’t be on the cards for the truncated Palestinian state envisaged, or rights for Palestinian refugees. But Palestinian civil society at home and abroad will torpedo a bad deal … The Palestinian-led boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement will chalk up more victories. The EU will be forced to take stronger measures against Israeli settlements and racism. The first cracks, albeit paper-thin, will appear in the solid US Congress support for Israel.” -Nadia Hijab
Tough day of talks as Palestinians push for UN statehood bid
Here’s what two Al-Shabaka Policy Advisors have to say on the PLO’s statehood bid at the UN… Nadia Hijab: “They are primarily trying to buy time and doing anything they can to postpone the dreaded moment when they say they have run out of options.” Sam Bahour: “The tragicomedy of US monopolisation of the never-ending ‘peace’ process has come to a dead end.”
Under siege: from Leningrad to Gaza
OpenSecurity has a shortened version of our roundtable discussion with Ayah Bashir and Esther Rapoport, “two strangers with very different pasts united by a common experience of siege and blockade.”
Gaza plan ‘relieves Israel of responsibility’
“Complicated mechanisms are being created to maneuver around the problem, not address it,” said Al-Shabaka Program Manager Alaa Tartir about the UN-PA partnership to reconstruct the Gaza Strip. “This means more money is wasted and Palestinians’ dependency status is entrenched … They are trying to maneuver around Hamas, even though, like it or not, it’s the governing body in Gaza.”
Authoritarianism in Palestine
Phil Leech reviews Al-Shabaka’s policy brief on the PA security sector with some indicators of rising authoritarianism: “There is now one security person for every 52 Palestinian residents compared to one educator for every 75 residents… there are already 52 new prisons and eight new security compounds – as well as riot control gear.”
Understanding Israeli Apartheid
Under apartheid in South Africa, Bantustans were established as a means to register and confine the work and activities of people to ‘homeland’ areas, whereas Palestinians today are actively denied homeland anywhere, while Israel continues its land grabs, says Al-Shabaka cofounder Samer Abdelnour in this good summary by The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs of Abdelnour’s recent presentation, “Understanding Israeli Apartheid,” at The Jerusalem Fund & Palestine Center in Washington.
Samah Sabawi on ABC Radio Melbourne
Featuring Al-Shabaka Policy Advisor Samah Sabawi:
US Taxpayers and Palestine’s Forced Dependency on Israel
Energy production and distribution are a case-in-point of “increasing forced Palestinian dependence on Israel,” explains Al-Shabaka’s Commissioning Editor Jacqueline Sansour. “As a [U.S.] taxpayer, I want Americans’ $600 million-a-year contribution to the Palestinian Authority (PA) to help end this occupation, not make it easier for Palestinians to endure it.” Sansour’s study is also a guide to several other Al-Shabaka-exclusive critiques on the Palestinians and their embargoed energy resources.
As Abbas returns from US, critics say talks doomed to fail
Ma’an report quotes Al-Shabaka Director Nadia Hijab: “As Mahmoud Abbas left his meeting with US president Barack Obama today, did he reflect on the lessons of seeking peace without power?” — as well as Policy Advisor Sam Bahour: “There is not an iota of symmetry between a military occupying power and a supposedly protected occupied people. When the US stops putting Israel’s interests before its own and starts holding it accountable in proportion to the severity of its violations of international law, then maybe peace will have a chance.”
