typePolicy Focus
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Since October 2023, Israeli forces have brutally murdered over 40,000 Palestinians in Gaza, injured 100,000, and displaced nearly all of the occupied area’s population. In that same time, the Israeli regime has embarked on the largest invasion of the West Bank since the Second Intifada, resulting in over 600 Palestinians killed and 10,900 detained. Israel has likewise expanded its genocidal assault into Lebanon, killing well over 1,000 people and displacing more than one million.
This Focus On highlights how Al-Shabaka has sought to respond to these developments over the past year. From grounding October 7th in the broader context of Israeli settler colonialism, to interrogating Israel's multifaceted war machine, to assessing rapidly evolving regional relations, this compilation of works represents Al-Shabaka's ongoing effort to articulate the Palestinian condition in real time.
As the Israeli regime continues its genocidal campaign against Palestinians in Gaza, many have begun to weigh in on the future of Hamas and of Palestinian leadership more broadly once the bombardment ends. One of the dominant proposals is the revival of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), with Hamas as a member party.
But revival of the PLO requires more than bringing Hamas into the fold, as the Fatah-controlled PA has effectively whittled down the PLO to a barren institution. What then, beyond inclusion, is needed in order to resuscitate the viability of the PLO? In an effort to strengthen the generative thinking around these questions, Al-Shabaka revisits a collection of its past works that sought to confront this very topic.
As much of the world struggles to make sense of the devastation across colonized Palestine since October 7th, Palestinians speaking out continue to be dehumanized and silenced in an effort to quash testimonies that challenge the dominant discourse.
To counter this strategy, Al-Shabaka has compiled a collection of its past works that may serve to ground readers in the wider context of this current moment. Together, these publications, webinars, and podcasts speak to the many layers that form the foundation of this point of rupture. They offer possibilities for new ways both to understand the past and present, as well as to envision a radically different future.
In this Focus On, Al-Shabaka’s policy analysts imagine Palestinian political futures within the context of historical and ongoing realities. Among other topics, they revisit the history of popular committees and consensus-building efforts during the First Intifada to show how local Palestinian governance might be strengthened, and how we might rethink the meaning of self-determination from the grassroots. They consider how various aspects of Palestinian society, including health, education, and policing, could be transformed to help sustain a new political vision for liberation, and revive popular engagement in colonized Palestine and beyond. And they examine the different means through which Palestinians can utilize international legal avenues to strategize an effective anti-apartheid movement.
The arrival of new digital technologies over the past decade has had critical implications for Palestinian activism. On the one hand, these developments have reinvigorated the Palestinian cause. Indeed, social media platforms have facilitated new channels and modes of social organization, helping Palestinians counter their geographic fragmentation under Israeli apartheid.
Jerusalem continues to lie at the center of political developments in Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, and in the shifting landscape of US and EU foreign policy toward Palestine and the Israeli regime.
Punctuated by the outbreak of the Unity Intifada in May 2021, the trajectory of Palestinian resistance is experiencing a watershed phase marked by new actors and themes. With the effective neutralization of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) since the 1993 Oslo Accords, the deepening geopolitical fragmentation of Palestinians across colonized Palestine and the world, and the global shift to cyberspace, new opportunities — and threats — to Palestinian resistance have emerged.
The Palestinian national movement is in an acute state of crisis, and the Palestinian political system and institutions are incapable of bringing the Palestinian people closer to realize their rights. The existing style of governance and models of leadership prove on a daily basis to be unfit for present and future Palestinian generations seeking equality, justice, and freedom above all.
How can the PLO maintain accountability as both a national liberation movement and governing body? How might Hamas and Islamic Jihad be integrated after decades of exclusion? What models of Palestinian youth leadership can be further developed?
To mark the 72nd year of the Nakba – the catastrophe when Zionist forces evicted the majority of Palestinians from their homes and lands, occupying 78% of Palestine – Al-Shabaka reissues this insightful compilation of essays by its engaged scholars and analysts.
Historic Palestine has long had an abundance of natural resources, ranging from fresh and ground water, arable land and, more recently, oil and natural gas. In the seven decades since the establishment of the state of Israel, these resources have been compromised and exploited through a variety of measures. These include widespread Palestinian dispossession of land in the ongoing Nakba, exploitation of water through failed negotiations, and a finders-keepers approach to gas and oil found in or under occupied land.
Media & Outreach
The Makdisi Street podcast speaks with Palestinian analyst Tareq Baconi, author of Hamas Contained (Stanford University Press, 2018) and president of the board of Al-Shabaka. One year into the Gaza genocide, they discuss the emergence Hamas and its role in the Palestinian political polity, its sweeping victory in Gaza in 2006 as well as its subsequent governance in Gaza and attempts to contain its growth through blockade. They explore how October 7th upended the entire strategic alignment of the Western imperialist powers that are part of Israeli apartheid structure, and recentered Palestine.
US law prohibits military assistance to allies blocking Gaza humanitarian aid, but Washington says no assessment on Israel.
By failing to take action to halt it, universities and other institutions in Europe and North America are enabling the slaughter of Palestinians.
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As the only global Palestinian think tank, we’re working hard to respond to rapid developments affecting Palestinians, while remaining committed to shedding light on issues that may otherwise be overlooked.
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