What Role for Law in the Palestinian Struggle for Liberation?
Palestinians are divided over whether law can serve a positive function in their quest for self-determination. Al-Shabaka Policy Advisor Noura Erakat argues that law’s value is wholly contingent on the broader political framework that gives it meaning. She proposes that Palestinians adopt a complementary approach that includes using the law when justice can be served and political avenues when the law itself entrenches unjust outcomes.
The Palestinian Capitalists That Have Gone Too Far
A powerful group of Palestinian capitalists is thriving in the occupied Palestinian territory even as most of the population is struggling to survive. Too often, they owe their wealth to economic collaboration with Israel. Drawing on recent research, Al-Shabaka Policy Member Tariq Dana analyzes the ways in which these “crony capitalists” influence policy, use indebtedness for social control, and normalize the occupation. Click below for the full brief or read the executive summary.
Activating Palestine’s UNESCO Membership
Palestinian leaders have not activated Palestine’s UNESCO membership despite the costly battle to join and even though it could help rebalance the skewed Israeli-Palestinian power dynamic. Al-Shabaka Guest Author Valentina Azarov and Policy Member Nidal Sliman review the assaults on Palestinian cultural heritage and set out the significant practical advantages of UNESCO membership, including reasserting sovereignty over Palestinian land and sea and obliging third states to hold Israel accountable.
Can Oslo’s Failed Aid Model Be Laid to Rest?
The Oslo Accords not only left the Palestinian people much worse off politically; they also devastated the economy of those living under Israeli occupation despite the $23 billion-plus that donors have poured into the territory. What’s worse, Wildeman and Tartir found no signs of a change in donor policies in their recent study.
Oslo’s Roots: Kissinger, the PLO, and the Peace Process
According to conventional wisdom, the PLO signed the Oslo Accords twenty years ago because it was almost bankrupt and feared an alternate leadership would emerge. But PLO Chairman Yasir Arafat sought to establish relations with the U.S. after the October 1973 War and offered significant concessions before ever reaching the negotiating table.
How Sovereign a State?
Will re-launched Israeli-Palestinian negotiations lead to a sovereign Palestinian state? In this brief, Al-Shabaka Policy Advisor Camille Mansour analyzes Israeli and Palestinian positions relating to key issues of sovereignty (i.e. armaments, alliances, crossings, borders, Israeli military posts). His conclusions – and warnings – are essential reading.
Decades of Displacing Palestinians: How Israel Does It
Israel is estimated to have forcibly displaced some 66% of the whole Palestinian population by 2011. Al-Shabaka Policy Advisor Munir Nuseibah identifies six different methods Israel uses on both sides of the Green Line and elaborates two: Personal status engineering and urban planning. He argues for a holistic approach to address the systematic nature of forced displacement, which is grounded in the very ethos of a state established to create and maintain a Jewish majority in all of historic Palestine.
Palestinian Civil Society: What Went Wrong?
Palestinians under Israeli occupation led the civil resistance that culminated in the First Intifada of the 1980s. By the mid-1990s, much of civil society was “NGO-ized” draining the Palestinian national movement of leadership. Al-Shabaka Policy Member Tariq Dana examines the shift in organizational agendas and tactics and recommends ways to reverse course.
Beyond South Africa: Understanding Israeli Apartheid
Israeli apartheid is often compared to South Africa’s but Al-Shabaka Policy Advisor Samer Abdelnour argues that it is a unique brand with specific characteristics. He identifies three inter-locking dimensions of Israeli apartheid – physical, architecture, and ideological – concluding that it is far more sophisticated than the South African brand and suggesting directions for thinking and action to successfully dismantle it.
